


Valence Shell

by BurgerBurgerBurger



Category: His Dark Materials (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Maryisa, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:34:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28340049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurgerBurgerBurger/pseuds/BurgerBurgerBurger
Summary: The whole concept of her is foreign and enigmatic, and Marisa wants to pull her apart and study her beneath a chemist's microlens; she wants to distill her virtue into discreet molecules that can be classified and indexed and mimicked. She wants to dissect and possess every inch of her mystery until she understands that fearlessness too.
Relationships: Marisa Coulter/Mary Malone
Comments: 146
Kudos: 212





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my His Dark Materials sinkhole. Please fall in love with the sad faith & science girlfriends like I did. This will have a happy ending despite remaining largely show!canon complaint but, as always, I'm taking liberties with the source material. This is set after Mary and Marisa meet in 2x05, and assumes there are several days before Lyra returns to Boreal's house. I expect it to be 3 or 4 chapters long. Also, preemptive apologies that I'm so horny for scientific and religious symbolism.
> 
> Alternate title: Marisa Coulter casually stalks Mary Malone for indiscernible reasons.
> 
> TW: mentions of Marisa's past relationships with men and attempted sexual assault, misogyny, past child abuse, homophobia, general sad mom/war criminal shit, sad ex-nun shit

* * *

**Carbon (C)** , atomic number 6, has 4 electrons in its outer shell. Carbon often shares electrons to achieve a complete valence shell by forming bonds with other atoms.

* * *

Mary Malone isn't pretty in any way that matters. She is not coquettish and enticing like Marisa has learned to be: serviceable enough to convince lesser men that she is worthy of being kept along the periphery of their inner sanctum, a convenient tool for their use, but never enough to view her as a threat or, Authority forbid, an equal. They are almost the same age and the same height, or they would be if not for Marisa's heels: her favorite weapon, a rattlesnake's warning to all who'd dare approach her. But her elegance is slick and targeted and self-conscious, and Marisa thinks Mary recognizes these things about her at once.

Dr. Malone wears garish trainers that squeak on the scuffed tiles of her cluttered office, full of books she's read and research she's done. Everything about her is colorful and welcoming because there are simply no predators to scare away, or at least none she fears. She has no reason to hide her prodigious intelligence or smooth her half-brushed hair. The sum of her parts is a bright smile wrapped in a dowdy little package that the men in Marisa's world would mock and scorn with their holy contempt, whittling her down to nothingness until she either fled their sphere of influence or learned to serve them.

Marisa sits on the edge of the bed picking at her cuticle, berating herself for running at the first sign of danger. Ozymandias curls in the windowsill, staring down at the quiet road below, hidden behind the thin white curtain to avoid the gaze of prying neighbors. From a distance he could pass for a lazy orange tabby basking in the sunlight, a favorite form of his before he settled. The empty-eyed daemon glances back at her, but she does not return the look.

Boreal's guest bedroom offers her some measure of privacy from him and his impotent henpecking, not nearly as much distance as she'd prefer, but she knows she will have to face him again later, all batting eyelashes and the flirtatious promise of something more. He cannot see the truth of her— no one ever does— and bile rises up in her throat. She swallows it down and thinks of Lyra, and how she needs Boreal to find her again though he is a simpering, conniving thief. Her daughter will inevitably return for her stolen alethiometer.

She adds another tick mark in the innumerable tally of crimes against her child, many of which Marisa herself committed— she has nightmares of the way Lyra and her daemon shrieked and writhed in pain on her orders, at her hand, the disgusting tableau melding into an echo of her own sordid memories— and Ozymandias whimpers. She shushes him and clenches her jaw, glowering at herself in the mirror.

Mary Malone said Lyra could read the compass, her delicate voice tinged with wonder. How right she was for that soft appreciation and fascination, dark blue eyes flitting over Marisa's face for answers she didn't have, and wouldn't give if she did. When the shock wore off and the coiled terror unsnaked itself in her gut, how _proud_ she was too to learn her daughter is a symbol-reader, a prophetess, that she bears an innate gift the Magisterium would literally kill to master. She simply _can_ , because she is Lyra Belacqua and she is Marisa Coulter's daughter and she is unstoppable.

Marisa thinks of herself again, as she often does, and what she could have been in this strange world. A softer version of herself, permeated with light, supple strength like Mary, free and genuine and ignorant of the degradation that defines her entire existence. She would never bow and scrape before inept, plagiarizing clergymen and their lackeys, never obey their hypocritical sermons or bow her head solemnly at their shouts of piety. 

There is no such submission in Mary Malone, no scathing, razor-sharp fear, no tangled lies or catalogue of escape routes. Her conviction is still and thoughtful: where Marisa staggers around like a wretched, wounded animal, splashing and gagging in a bloody riverbed, Mary sits in her office with her unlocked door and her list of accomplishments that no man begrudges or questions. She is a sledgehammer at rest, used only in the most dire of circumstances, and Marisa is a scalpel slicing ten thousand cuts with every breath but never managing to break through the other side.

Jealousy wells up, cold and nauseating, and Ozymandias burrows his face into the crook of his arm. Marisa sucks her painted lips into her mouth and pushes the thought aside. Mary is not the source of the problem. Mary helped Lyra.

There is only forward motion, protection in her momentum, and the certainty that if she stops for any reason, she will surely fail. As Marisa fled down the hallway at St. Peter's, her heels clacking on the cheap beige tiles that apparently plague academia in every world, the venom in her heart poured out in syrupy trails from the hole Mary punctured in her. She tried not to cry, her eyes peeled wide, doused in her own poison.

Mary saw through her, she knows. She is too clever not to see that something is missing, and Marisa is as transparent as an empty glass.

* * *

Marisa wishes to be alone, as she often does, and lingers near the western edge of the University Park, her gaze fixed on the dilapidated Hume-Rothery Building.

She would do anything to remove herself from Boreal's house, to avoid his concerned scrutiny and the brown eyes that trail her every movement, equally clouded with misplaced devotion and lascivious desire. Like all men, he cannot place her tidily into a box that suits his complexes, so the pendulum swings from worshiping her to despising her, and she cares not where it stops because the shame feels just the same. 

She returned to Mary Malone's office building earlier that morning, though she didn't go inside. Instead she loitered on a bench in the courtyard of St. Peter's, flipping idly through a discarded newspaper, peering up at the front door from time to time. She scanned the local news and international politics, the hideous cartoons that made little sense to her, the sporting games in which she had no interest. Her eyes lingered on a full page advertisement for a small brown bear creature named _Paddington_ , posed like some mockery of a daemon in a rain jacket and bucket hat, as gaudy as any Gyptian could aspire to be.

A shock of auburn hair drew her attention and she set aside her paper at once, following at a distance. Mary Malone walked with purpose off campus, her rubber-soled trainers padding on the stonework, more comfortable than Marisa's heels but equally silent. She perfected that art in the marble halls of the Magisterium, only making noise when she wished to, and not a moment prior.

Mary greets the ancient doorman and lounging students in the courtyard, sunny and carefree, drawing people toward her like the pull of a celestial body. She has no guard to lower, no pretenses to keep; she is unafraid that such vulnerability could hurt her, could get her _killed_ , and she walks from her office to her ramshackle research center across campus, idly smiling the entire way. The whole concept of her is foreign and enigmatic, and Marisa wants to pull her apart and study her beneath a chemist's microlens; she wants to distill her virtue into discreet molecules that can be classified and indexed and mimicked. She wants to dissect and possess every inch of her mystery until she understands that fearlessness too.

A gust of wind catches the collar of her lavender pantsuit and she idly lays it flat, fingers toying with the fabric. She catches a glimpse of coppery hair moving through the first floor of the research building— Mary is chatting with some man, her colleague— and Marisa crosses the street to better watch them, willingly pulled into her orbit, submitting to her curiosity.

There are no hungry women in her world. No impertinent, arrogant, _free_ women in her world.

There are no women like Mary, only men whose doctrine is carnage and compliance, who remind her at every turn that she is illogical and dangerous and sinful, a lesser creature who stole Adam's rib and ate the gift of the serpent. She wonders how it felt when the sacred Knowledge flooded Eve. Did it electrify her nervous system cluster by cluster like sinking into a scorching hot bath? Did it blink into existence from the cold vacuum of nothingness like the world was made in Genesis?

Marisa has spent her whole life eradicating Original Sin but, if she's being honest with herself, she would have eaten the apple too. The temptation of Knowing is far too sweet, too tantalizing, too powerful. An unsteady smile flickers at the corner of her lips: she always was a heretic, and a guilty, despicable woman. It's easier to admit it here in this world, when she is far from the oppression of the Magisterium. She doesn't have to tiptoe drunkenly along her balustrade and hope the wind catches her and removes all the hard choices from her wicked, worthless hands. Here she can simply admit her kinship with Eve.

She watches through the smudged window as Mary scribbles lazy notes on a basement chalkboard, her fingertips white with dust, stepping around untidy piles of books and binders. There is such sharp intelligence behind her sapphire eyes, but she is too good to ever understand why Marisa must do what she does. That treacherous innocence isn't her fault, Marisa knows: Mary comes from a safer world, an ignorant world, where women don't have to lie to survive.

That's what it takes to live surrounded by men who hate women but crave their intimacy and emotional labor. Men who worship the saints and purest virgins who've no desires of their own except to please their husbands, to _elevate_ their husbands, to bear them more children who perpetuate the cycle, until they all shrink their daughters small enough to disappear like a grain of sand, locked away in a tidy box whose dark insides they never asked to see.

She knows too, how they fantasize about their whores, and the brutal things they wish upon them in the dead of night. It leaks out of them when they speak to her, the demeaning, savage menace rippling under their prayers. She knows what they would do to her if she let them. She knows how they would hurt her.

Marisa pays that violence forward in a thousand little ways, passing it down to those weaker than herself: to orphans in steel cages and intercised, blank-eyed holy women and battered witches bound at the stake. She cuts and chokes and rips out magic cloud-pine needle by needle, because she cannot help herself and she cannot help her situation, and as she stares at Mary through the basement window, she thinks it is impossible to quantify how much she hates herself. Mary would hold her accountable for the mindless cruelties that come so easily to her now, ever since she drove Ozymandias away. Since she learned to hurt him like her parents did.

She finds some solace in the fact that she is still here at all, a resolute, enduring woman who still manages to accomplish greatness though her world is stacked against her. She pays a steep price for it: the cost is a wedge that splits her down the center, fractured and peeling apart. She is a poorly laid chimney of crooked bricks and crumbling mortar, and she cannot hold heat for all her trying. Her smoke ekes out and catches on the wind, dissipating to nothingness. She is an empty, empty thing, and she doesn't need to keep her soul near.

Marisa shivers. Mary disappears to a room she cannot see, and she is awash with profound loneliness, gazing down at the vacant room.

She stares a moment longer before her feet carry her back to Boreal's house. She has nowhere else to go.

* * *

The walk to the coffee shop near St. Peter's is a long one, but she savors the opportunity to get away from Carlo and his oppressive, uninteresting living room. She dawdled there yesterday, bored senseless, but Lyra did not return.

The small shop feels empty devoid of daemons, unnaturally quiet except for the sounds of hushed conversations of studying post-grads, and the sultry whispers of a couple on a date in the corner. Marisa watches everyone around her, as she often does, gauging how best to mimic their behaviors, their expressions. The Magisterium believes Lyra's feral nature and unguarded fury come from Asriel and his determination and anger. There's truth in that— Lyra has both of those in spades too— but the disconnect from the world at large comes from her mother. 

Marisa was always remarkably clever mathematically and scientifically, an analytical powerhouse. But socially she struggled. She could parrot her peers and parents, but her tone was always off, a shirt done up with a missed button. It took her years to learn the right posture, how to time her laughter for jokes she didn't understand and didn't find amusing. How to string along men, and respond to their ultimatums when her life was in danger. At least the threats were an enjoyable challenge on some level.

She eyes the curling script of the multi-colored menu posted overhead, wondering what a macchiato is. No one in the queue has ordered one yet.

A girl a few years older than Lyra is in front of her in line wearing soft sweatpants and an oversized shirt, bright and mismatched like the cheap sleepwear of the Gyptians, and when no one else scowls at her unkempt appearance, Marisa follows suit. She was younger than the disheveled girl when she began to understand the value of her appearance, how she could use it like armor to protect herself and ward off predators. _Aposematism_ , the natural biologists called it: her signal that fighting her wasn't worth it, that she could and would defend herself.

The girl's order is taken without hesitation and she loiters by the wooden bar off to the side, immediately preoccupied by her cellular telephone. Marisa squints at it. The technological advances of this world are remarkable but its obnoxious penchant for misnomers far outweighs its utility. There's nothing cellular about it, and _telephone_ is a ridiculous-sounding word. Boreal dove into the etymology behind various technological naming schemes on the second day of their arrival— she recalls him fumbling around the crude phrase _laptop_ while she stared back, emotionless— and she mirthlessly learned that he enjoyed explaining things to her as much as all men do. Even when she doesn't ask or already knows the answer.

Marisa orders the macchiato to go. She doesn't really care what it is at this point; she is curious and wants to try something new. She gives the clerk enough of Carlo's paper currency to cover the costs and puts the rest in a tip jar, realizing at once she has misstepped. The blue haired barista raises her eyebrows and exclaims, "Wow, thank you!"

"You're very welcome," she generously replies. She turns to wait by the wooden bar, glancing around and hoping her faux pas wasn't so egregious that the other patrons would take note of it. There is a flash of auburn in her periphery and she stops dead in her tracks, a doe before floodlights.

Behind her stands Mary Malone.

* * *

"Didn't expect to see you on campus again," says Mary flatly. 

Marisa's mouth works incoherently, words forming and evaporating on her lips instantaneously. She is so rarely caught off-guard. She swallows thickly, sucking her lips into her teeth. Even the girl with the cell phone glances up at them, sensing the abrupt tension as she retrieves her drink.

Mary's scrutinizing eyes bore into her. She isn't a frightening woman, not like Marisa herself, but there is something in her gaze that could make a lesser person tremble: an authority, a confidence, an intelligence. There is calm certainty in her face, as if she's perusing a familiar book, sorting little notes with her mind and her gut, and trusting them both with a balance that offers her unparalleled perception. Marisa knew at once that Mary was keen enough to be a problem.

She tears her gaze away and steps forward in line, flashing a friendly smiles at the barista, "Hi Shelby. Small latté to go, please." 

Marisa nervously shifts her weight, trapped like a cornered animal. She could run again, simply turn and walk away without acknowledging a single word, but Mary watches her with a raised eyebrow as she shoves a thin wallet into her back pocket, jangling the carabiner of keys hooked on her belt loop. It would be even more suspicious if she fled from her scrutiny a second time.

"Macchiato for Marisa," a boy behind the counter calls. He slides her small drink forward on the bartop.

She clutches her paper coffee cup in her palms. "I'm terribly sorry. Something pressing came up-"

Mary scoffs and folds her arms, her navy blazer wrinkling at the elbows. "I caught you in a lie, if that's what you mean by 'something pressing.' I Googled you and everything. Nothing came up for Marisa Coulter, if that's really your name."

Her lip twitches, suddenly defensive and off-kilter, though she's been in far more precarious situations before. There is nothing roundabout in this conversation, only the flat black and white of her lies and Mary's unwavering confirmation of them. She's never felt such impetus to defend herself truthfully and directly, the same blunt way Mary accuses her. Marisa presses, "That _is_ my name."

"I thought you were with some institute come to poach my research. You wouldn't be the first. I thought they finally did some digging on me and sent someone more," she waves her hand at Marisa for emphasis, " _effective_ the second time, and I _completely_ fell for it. But you really are looking for Lyra, aren't you?"

The color drains from Marisa's face.

"I-"

"Another bully cop, come to harass a child," Mary sneers. "I'll not tolerate another second of that tripe. What's your badge number, detective? I reported DI Walters and I'll report you too."

Marisa's stomach sinks. Boreal hadn't mentioned the police. She frowns, "I'm not a detective."

"Here you go, Mary," says the boy as he slides her coffee across the bar. His brown eyes glance back and forth between them, openly nervous. Marisa may be completely out of her element but she knows they're laying the groundwork for a major scene, and she desperately wants to escape the attention of strangers. She wants to escape Mary too, at least her anger.

"Thank you, David," Mary replies before she turns her attention back to Marisa. "Let's talk outside, unless you need to get back to your stakeout."

Marisa's lip curls up, but she passes through the door that Mary holds for her. "I am not with the police."

"Oh, of course not," says Mary, leading them across the street to return to her office. "You're ' _Lyra's mother_.'" She makes quotation marks in the air, half spilling her hot coffee. 

Fury rips through her, unconstrained and affronted as she stares at the back of Mary's head. She seethes, her voice frightfully cold, "I _am_ Lyra's mother, and you will watch your tone."

" _No_ , I won't watch anything," Mary whips around to face her, lanyard slashing through the air, her demeanor disturbingly unafraid. Marisa glares in shock, unused to being refused by anyone except Lyra, but Mary manages to match her infuriating incorrigibility measure for measure. She bites out, "Show me your badge or prove you're Lyra's mother. I won't believe a thing you say until you do."

Marisa's excuses are wearing thin; she is wearing thin. The people in the courtyard are watching them too, and she feels an uncomfortable blush creep up her neck. "I can't," she exhales. "For our own protection."

"That sounds like something a cop would say," Mary stands tall before her, completely immovable. Her voice lowers sadly, "You'd better go. It's a real shame you're not who you say you are. I'd have liked to talk to her."

Her words sting like a slap in the face. Marisa's pulse pounds in her ears and she feels the burning threat of tears in her eyes, pathetic and insistent, her perpetual shame. She doesn't understand why this hurts so much— it's the stress, she tells herself, of missing Lyra and failing her mission and worrying for her safety— or why the outright loss of Mary's approval is so devastating when she never even expected to speak to her again. Her face twists up in misery and she turns her back on Mary before her tears fall in earnest, and she wordlessly lurches away.

"Ah," Mary sighs. "Wait. I didn't—" She reaches forward and lightly grabs Marisa's wrist.

Marisa flinches hard, her hunched shoulders shuddering as she pulls her hand into her chest; and she hates herself for betraying that weakness, for her terrified impulse to withdraw from contact. People are staring at her. Mary is staring at her. Her heart pounds and she wants to run.

"Okay," says Mary, catching her breath. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have grabbed you." She cautiously closes the space between them, peering up at Marisa's quivering lips and blocking her face from passersby. "Hey, do you want to sit? We can sit and talk if you want." Mary reaches forward again as if to take her elbow but withdraws her open hand at once, thinking better of it.

Marisa screws her eyes shut and slowly nods. They relocate to a bench in a small stone alcove, private and shadowy, and Mary sits beside her without touching, both of her hands wrapped around her coffee cup. Her curly hair falls in her eyes as she faces her, murmuring, "I'm very sorry, Marisa. I was wrong. I've been so rude and I scared you—"

"Lyra's my daughter," she cuts her off. She doesn't want to talk about herself or the way she sometimes winces; she thought she'd learned better to control it after all these years. Her cheeks blush fever-bright, embarrassed and vulnerable. Words tumble out of her in a semi-coherent blurt, "She is the only child I will ever have. She has scabby knees from playing on rooftops, and she won't listen to a soul on this earth when her mind is set on something. She is absolutely infuriating, and brilliant, and is bolder and smarter and better than I will ever be."

She doesn't have more details she can share about Lyra beyond the unshakeable truth she offers up, but that will have to serve as proof enough. She doesn't know her favorite color or her favorite book or her favorite food, and this hazy, fervent description is the only explanation of her child she can give.

She doesn't know why she's sitting on this cold bench telling Mary anything at all. She wipes her eyes hard, mascara staining her knuckles, and doesn't look up. She _can't_ look up: Mary will see the malice in her eyes and know the toxic truth of her at once. She is a empty, prosthetic person and a wretched mother, and she will never pass muster against Mary's measurements.

"I don't know about that last bit, but I do believe you," Mary murmurs. "I'm so sorry I didn't before." She reaches out on impulse to cover Marisa's hand with her own, to comfort and reassure her, but withdraws it again, her fingers curling into her thigh. She clears her throat uneasily.

Marisa stares down at the tidy bricks beneath her black heels. She can feel Mary's warmth bleeding out of her like sunlight; she can taste her compulsion for caretaking. It's pathetic, what Marisa wants, greedy and poorly and childish. It's something Ozymandias would do.

And still she longs for touch, uncoerced and freely-given. She wants it, and in this world she can have it.

She places her right hand on Mary's left, limp and inadequate, her eyes still fixed on the ground. Mary sets her coffee aside at once, covering Marisa's hand with both of her own, enveloping her with warmth and softness. Marisa wills herself not to tense up and weep again, not from a single act of kindness from a stranger. But her body melts into it— she hasn't _wanted_ in so long— because she is a pitiful woman. Mary should be holding a better hand, one unstained by so much blood.

"I'm so sorry," Mary repeats softly. "You and Lyra must be having a terrible time. I was suspicious after that police officer came and he was so terribly inappropriate. So— so... _aggressive_ , the way he cornered us. Lyra ran and I'm so thankful she did. I'm sure she told you."

Her stomach clenches, hardening with vicious clarity. She decides then that she is going to kill Boreal and his underling both. "Yes, Lyra mentioned it. But she was," she lightly shakes her head, "vague."

"But she's safe now? With your friends?"

"Yes, she's safe. We're safe," Marisa lies, and it hurts more than usual, like splinters in the base of her skull or like a cloud-pine pulled out by tweezers.

"Thank goodness." Mary's thumb mindlessly strokes across the veins of Marisa's hand, and she _tsks_ between her teeth. Marisa watches, entranced, as Mary's hand remains gentle but her voice grows fierce. "That cop was a real prick. I yelled him right out of the building, and immediately called the precinct. I haven't been so furious in a long time. You should have heard my friends trying to talk me down."

She laughs lightly, her anger gone in an instant. It washes away from her in the span of a breath; not burrowing deep and festering in her heart like it does for Marisa. She stares at her smiling, pink lips and wonders if Mary ever hurts the way she does, if hatred rattles in her ribcage, toxic and all-consuming. She looks away, painfully self-conscious, but Mary only smiles wider.

"Thank you," Marisa whispers, her throat constricting. "For helping her."

"Of course. It really is the least I could do. I think she's a wonderful girl." Mary tilts her head, her blue eyes openly roaming Marisa's face, attentive and concerned. "Look, if you and Lyra need to get away from whatever's happening, my door is always open. You're both welcome. Or just you, if you need to vent. I'll do my best not to pry, I promise," she chuckles. "I have a few meetings tomorrow morning but after that I'm free, if you'd like to meet up."

Marisa knows at once that she should refuse. She should flee and hide, and never risk divulging all her secrets. She should go back to Boreal's awful house to wait for her wayward daughter, and pretend she can still stand his company, dancing just out of reach in the hideous ballet she's perfected.

But this world is different. There are free, fearless women here who expect nothing from her, who only want to protect her and her daughter, and she is full to the brim with a temptation she doesn't understand: a precarious, unraveling heat burns low in her stomach.

"All right," she says instead, and Mary happily squeezes her hand.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year, everyone! Thank you all so much for your supportive comments! They inspire me so much!
> 
> I call this chapter "intrusive thoughts with Marisa." Sorry there's so much Boreal on the front end. If it's any consolation, I firmly believe she hates him too. :3
> 
> TW: for the same things mentioned in Ch. 1 and a brief mention of an eating disorder.

Boreal responds poorly, as he often does. When she returns from St. Peter's that afternoon, he is standing in the foyer of his extravagant home trying to pick a fight he stands no chance of winning. She roots through the masks in her arsenal, her mind trailing along the edges of each of them until she finds one that fits perfectly, disarming and constructive. She prefers her blades two-sided.

"I didn't mean to worry you, truly," she coos. "I think you're right, Carlo. It may be best for me to have a mobile phone like you do, so we can can stay in communication. It felt strange to be without you for so long."

He doesn't register at all that he's never spoken those words and, if given more time to consider the danger before him, wouldn't agree with any sentiment that places another weapon in her hands, but nonetheless he sternly nods. "Yes, it's high time."

It takes them an hour to return to the house, shopping bag in tow. She dangled off of his arms and words at the store, smiling every time he checked to be sure she was listening, a tedious but necessary price to pay for her new freedom. She feigns ignorance as he sets up her accounts and passwords, the four digits required to unlock the screen. He explains slowly, pedantically, as if she's some kind of idiot, until at last she snatches the phone from his grasp with a too-sharp smile, and asks, "What is your wireless internet password?"

He is in awe of her today, pleased with her simpering, and smiles back with a condescending dip of his head. "Ever quick on the uptake, aren't you?"

She can leverage that to her advantage. Carlo is far more compliant when he thinks they're flirting. He retrieves a notepad scribbled with alphanumeric codes from a kitchen drawer, and points to one at the top of the first page. Her fingers brush the edge of the paper, and she memorizes the twelve discreet characters so she will never have to ask again. 

"I like to stay abreast of the latest trends," she exhales, and the corner of her lips twitch up just _so_ , just enough for him to notice it. The humiliation of it pulses in her neck like she's swallowed a hot coal, and he stands so close to her she can feel his breath on her face. Crushing the desire to recoil, she slips the notepad back into his grasp and murmurs, "Thank you."

She types the passcode into her phone, using both thumbs the way the girl in the coffeeshop did, then escapes to the privacy of the guest bedroom without looking back.

Some fractional piece of her is chipped away every time they interact, her disgust covered by the pretense of attraction. She longs to be clean. Marisa locks the bedroom door and plugs in the new phone to charge, then strips off her clothes with shaking hands. As she steps into the scalding hot shower, forcing herself not to grimace in pain, her stomach turns. Pale flesh reddens in the heat, and from the other room she hears Ozymandias whimper.

She is terrified that one day she will not be able to feel the subtle edges of her masks, that they will fuse to her face, and she will barely remember there was ever a disconnect at all.

* * *

The first thing she learns is how to delete her browsing history. The second thing she learns is how to change her passwords.

For all her impatience it doesn't frustrate her that she is slow typing on the digital keyboard that knows when to appear and disappear. There are many boxes on the glowing display that she ignores, focusing on the three of import: the telephone, the text messages, and the Google. The thrill of a new world and a new skill courses through her, and she relishes that she is alone to explore it without the burden of another's expectations on her shoulders. She cannot recall the last time she learned for learning's sake, or had the opportunity to explore and research. Not since her earliest school days, she thinks.

She searches, then deletes, erasing all her footprints on the trail. She spends the afternoon sitting in the bed wearing her towel, her heels kicked off beneath the end table. Ozymandias loiters above her, perched on the headboard, looking over her shoulder at the screen. He doesn't disturb her, so she indulges his curiosity.

The floorboards outside her room creak once, an obvious indication that Boreal is in the hallway, unannounced and spying. She scowls, then searches for a way to hear things without Boreal hearing them, perhaps wired headsets like the radar technicians use. She can find them cheaply at petrol stations and newspaper stands, and resolves to buy a pair to prevent future eavesdropping. For all the luxury he has provided, Boreal's home remains a prison no different than the walls of the Magisterium itself. She sits in stifling silence and waits to hear the telltale creak of his retreat before she resumes her browsing.

She Googles everything. Maps of her current location, the history of Oxford and London and England, a slew of dense articles on Wikipedia to skim. She separates wheat from chaff, rooting out the information that doesn't currently serve her, but lingers on women's suffrage for only a moment before returning to the scientific discoveries of this world. The knowledge that she could bring home and adapt for her own needs is too tempting a notion to ignore.

It takes her three minutes to find something heretical on Youtube: a children's educational program about dinosaurs and evolution. She pauses the video, eyes narrow. It makes no mention of the Authority or this world's god, no disclaimer that these theories spit in the face of the Biblical creation myth. That humans are made in the Authority's likeness, not descended from particularly clever lizards.

She hits play again, eyes glued to the screen. Marisa Coulter is an academic, and even heresy deserves study.

She skips nothing, not the garish makeup tutorials, not the cooking videos, not the scruffy boys playing block games, but watches and absorbs it all, and glances up at Ozymandias as the advertisement's reflection flickers and dances in his round black eyes. 

_I Googled you and everything_ , Mary told her that morning.

She searches for her own name and grows quickly bored with the other Marisa Coulters of this world, all unremarkable and useless. Likewise with the Magisterium, Lyra Belacqua, Charles Latrom— the ridiculous pseudonym Boreal uses for his minions and slush funds that he somehow thinks she hasn't noticed— the alethiometer, Dust. She did not expect to find anything but nonsense, barring the dull website for Carlo's financial shell company, and finally her mind stills to the subject she'd hoped not to broach with herself.

The pads of her thumbs hover over the keyboard and Ozymandias stares expectantly at the empty search bar. She chews the inside of her cheek, frustrated that she stalled at all, that she's _still_ stalling, then Googles Mary Malone.

There are many, many Mary Malones. She scoffs, then Googles how to Google better, and quickly learns how to prevent an overload of results and find something tailored to what she wants. After several iterations of troubleshooting she hits her target with "Mary Malone astrophysics St. Peter's". There is a 16-minute-long video of Mary presenting at a scientific conference in Zurich three years ago. It only has 75 views.

The video opens with heartfelt cheering as Mary takes the stage, waving at the crowd, laughing when someone whistles for her. She adjusts the microphone, wincing at the feedback, and mutters _bloody hell_ loud enough for the whole room to hear. They laugh good-naturedly, and laugh again when she pulls a face, and Marisa thinks she has never in her life been the source of men's laughter if it wasn't at her own expense.

Mary carries on and Marisa watches it all, transfixed with the way she still wears her trainers at a formal event over a little blue cocktail dress and a tuxedo jacket. She pulls the phone closer as Mary clicks through her slides, proud of the work she and her colleagues have done, a preliminary paper on computational quantum mechanics, and how sometimes there are little animations on the screen that make her audience groan and laugh, and she smiles the widest, completely at ease, even though she is in a room full of scholars who could take _everything_ from her.

Mary speaks on behalf of her fellow contributors, all men, and the relief and pride is clear on their faces. They gaze up at her from their chairs without a shred of jealousy or anger, and Marisa feels deep in her chest that they adore her in a real way, authentic and born of admiration for her mind and skill. They love the bigness and brightness of her, and the space she occupies so effortlessly because she refuses to apologize for her presence— she belongs as much as anyone does, and stands on her own merits. She has everything Marisa has ever wanted—

The creaky floorboard rips through her ears like a spike in her brain, and she is snapped from her reverie, flustered and livid. "Dinner's ready," Boreal calls just outside her door. "I thought you'd be back down by now."

Ozymandias darts away from her, back to the window nook. It's dark outside and she's still in her towel, but her thick, wavy hair is completely dry. She'd been sitting there for hours, lost in exploring the newness of this world. Marisa swallows and says, "I'll be right there. I'm afraid I fell asleep."

"Ah, of course. Take your time," he replies, and she loathes how endearing he makes every wretched syllable sound, as if he's doing her a favor with his understanding when she never wanted dinner in the first place. He expects so much and is easy to fool because of it; she has merely to fill in the gaps on the portrait of her in his mind, a shadow here, a smack of color there, and he is content to keep her on the canvas that she aches to rip to shreds.

She drags herself downstairs wearing minimal makeup, and takes her seat at the table. Boreal furrows his brow— and she _knew_ he would comment on her appearance because men like him have no concept of how women really look without the paint they wear to appease them— and asks, "Are you feeling well? You look ill."

Her face remains empty, but her muscles long to vault the table and plunge her steak knife into the base of his throat, over and over until he stops moving, stops _interrupting_ , and she is spattered with his blood, the only makeup she needs, and is finally cleansed of him. She is greedy to be bathed in something more sacred than water.

"Just a bit tired," she replies.

After two hours of dinner and drinks, and him attempting not once but twice to sit closer to her, she judges he is content enough with her attention for her to leave again, and she escapes his brutalist living room back to her haven upstairs. She changes into pajamas and slides beneath her covers, laying on one side to face her phone. Ozymandias comes to watch again and, though he hovers over her pillow, she doesn't push him away. She pulls up Mary Malone's conference presentation again.

The truth of Marisa is beyond Boreal's comprehension. He has a shrunken, shriveled image in his mind that can never contain her multitudes and can never satisfy the hunger of a woman betrayed. Even Asriel could not. He was too selfish to understand why she did not simply _take_ what she wanted, as if the guarantee of success was an option laid at her feet, as if she was a man and they began the race from the same starting line. He could not fathom the danger of merely existing as she is, her mind a signal fire, because he cannot grasp anything outside of his experience of vigor and accomplishment, and for all his proclamations of love she will always be in the background of his story. 

It's somehow worse now, a deeper cut, because she sees how some men in this world can look at women. Like they have inherent value, like they're friends and equals. She remains tangled in her infernal inferiority/superiority complex— the best woman in her world is still less than the least of men— armed with the knowledge that there is no one like her. There will never be anyone like her, no matter how ardently she wishes it.

The video plays and people are clapping again. Mary saw some truer version of her, not a perfect form but something close: a relic of the witches washed clean of eons of grime and calcification, but still mottled with age and neglect. She remains an asymmetrical, deviant shape, but Mary held her hand as she blurred at the edges like she could mold her back into a real human being.

They are not the same, but she is closer in make to Mary than anyone else she knows, split from the same stolen rib. She finishes the video, deletes her search history, and stares at the wall until she falls asleep.

* * *

It's cooler the next afternoon, and Marisa wraps a green scarf around her neck, tucking it beneath her brown jacket before she slips into her heels. She learned how to French braid her hair after breakfast, her phone propped with a tutorial on display beneath her vanity mirror.

She tramps downstairs loud enough for Boreal to emerge from his study, and before he can ask she tells him, "I have an appointment with Mary Malone. I'll be back later."

His face twists with incredulous displeasure, "What? What if Lyra returns?"

He is no better than MacPhail and his judgmental superiority, demanding _where_ each time she steps out of his sight. As if he believes that by seeing her, she is no longer a threat to him. They are all the same, and all laughably wrong. 

"Then _you_ will be waiting here for her." Her voice drops to a rich, disconcerting alto, and she leans into his space until he flinches back. "I expected you to protest. But Lyra returned to Malone once before, and if your inept policeman underling hadn't frightened her away like an imbecile, I would have her by now, Carlo. After that failure, of which you somehow neglected to inform me, you have lost all right to suggest how best I spend my time."

She drinks in the horror in his eyes, as if she has scried past his well-guarded secrets with a mystical crystal ball and saw a toddler caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar. But the stakes are so much higher: the outcome of his failure and deceit could sign his death warrant, and he knows that _she_ knows it too. Marisa strides past him, and manages to contain a delighted smile until the door closes in his face.

She inhales the crisp, windy air, relishing the prickling in her lungs, and makes her way back to St. Peter's, stopping to buy a set of wired headsets— _earbuds_ , she mentally corrects; she must be careful with her terminology— and slips them into her coat pocket beside the phone. The old doorman at the college nods politely as if he expected her, and maybe he did, and neither resists her entry, nor asks for identification. Marisa recalls Mary talking to him multiple times, all casual, friendly chatter, the same sort she offered to everyone in her life. She provides an unshielded version of herself to the world at large, and never stops to fear the slings and arrows that could dismantle her.

The route to Mary's office is a simple one that she memorized from the start, and Marisa strides along the beige tiles without missing a beat, offering soft greetings to the quizzical faces who pass her. She suspects Mary knows all of these people too, as if she knows everyone in her world. Mary has space in her mind for them all, even the unimportant ones, and beholds each and every one with genuine interest.

Marisa knows everyone in her own world too. She catalogues their faces and histories like footnotes in her purloined textbooks from the academy: useful little tidbits about affairs and bastard children piled up in her mental toolkit, and she shifts herself to suit them like trying on new skin, until before they know it she is their most trusted confidante. A secret-keeper. And when she stabs them in the back without a second glance, they never knew whose hand held the blade.

Mary is not like that; she has room to keep others safe, and fills herself to the brim with them. But for all of Marisa's emptiness and the void that others could occupy, her insides are inhospitable: parched and grey and diabolical. She is empty like a shadow or a grave in the ground with so much space in her and no ability to fill it. 

She lingers in the hallway with a small shake of her head, plastering a tepid smile to her face. She must compose herself before passing through the open door with the snowcapped mountain postcard taped to the front. As she rounds the corner, Marisa's cheeks flush pink from the autumn wind or the stuffy office or the way Mary grins up at her from the desk chair with overt happiness radiating like sunshine.

"Hello again," Mary says, lowering her hands from the keyboard. "Here, please. Take a seat. I've got some fresh coffee already made."

When Marisa unbuttons her coat, unthreading her green scarf, Mary rises to meet her with a soft, "Ah, here."

She holds out her hands, offering to take the clothing and hang it on the coat rack behind her. Men use chivalry as an excuse to touch Marisa, to peel the outerwear from her shoulders and graze the soft skin of her neck beneath heavy collars. She loathes the invasion of her space, that they are always behind her and she cannot refuse without being named hysterical or unbecoming of a woman of her station. Marisa doesn't need help shrugging off her coat so Mary offers none, waiting before her with her hands patiently extended and the afternoon light shining lines through the slats across her red hair.

"Thank you," she tells Mary, her voice heavy as she hands over her garments.

"No problem at all." She hangs up the coat and scarf before puttering over to her coffee station, pouring them each a mug like she's done this a thousand times before and didn't just reduce Marisa to tears in the courtyard the day prior. Mary's casual normalcy is a comfort though the cheerful sincerity unnerves her. "How are you today? And cream or sugar?"

"I'm well, and just black please."

"Careful. It's a bit hot," Mary says, dropping a sugar packet into her mug. She returns to her seat and drinks deeply, her face twisting in obvious pain as she swallows, then coughs, ruefully smiling as her eyes water, "You know I sometimes give advice that I don't follow. Coffee's more than a bit hot, but I suppose I didn't really need my esophagus lining."

"Oh no," Marisa chuckles, and though her words are inconsequential and meaningless, her giddy tone is not. She cannot for the life of her remember the last time she laughed at something in earnest, spitelessly, or without some underlying motivation. Mary's eyes shine ocean deep and radiantly blue, brighter against the foggy red backdrop of unfallen tears. Marisa lowers her gaze, gently blowing the steam from the lip of her mug.

"Oh yes. I've two PhDs and can't drink coffee correctly," Mary coughs again, rolling her eyes at her self-inflicted misfortunate. "How's Lyra? I'd love it if you bring her along sometime."

"Mmm. She's with our friends."

"Would I know these friends? I've traveled a bit, but I've been in Oxford for quite some time."

"I'm afraid they're transplants too. And Lyra is a bit more," she sips her coffee and the blistering temperature doesn't bother her in the least, " _restricted_ at the moment."

"Because she's a minor," says Mary cautiously.

"Yes."

"Who ran."

"Yes."

"From protective custody," Mary tries.

Marisa lingers on her words, searching her face with a well-honed eye. Mary is filling in the gaps like a true intellectual, and Marisa lets her make whatever assumptions she needs. She prefers outright lies for her alibis, but that's dangerous territory to tread in this world, and Mary can jump to the wrong conclusions that fit a sensible narrative herself.

"It's for her safety," Marisa frowns. "For _our_ safety. It is a very delicate and precarious situation."

"Lyra mentioned a few things when she first visited. Some subjects that most scientists and theologians would consider a bit," Mary thoughtfully clucks her tongue, searching for the right word, "fundamentalist."

Marisa's heart sinks in her ribcage. She stares over the rim of her mug, blank faced as Mary forges on in her blunt way, gentle but insistent like she speaks to a frightened animal. Marisa sits upright, correcting her hunch, realizing that the body language she currently portrays is, in fact, that of a frightened animal. 

"I don't know what the Magisterium is, or why they taught Lyra about _Dust_ in school, but I think you're both very brave to escape that life. You and Lyra's father—"

"Her father is not in the picture," Marisa snaps.

Mary's lips close softly, gauging how best to respond, perhaps how much to believe. She would be a fool not to harbor some measure of suspicion of the woman she invited to her office, and Mary Malone is no fool. She doesn't probe for more information or better explanations for Marisa's abrupt departure two days prior, though some part of her must be dissatisfied by what she's been given, but Marisa thinks with great confidence that even if Mary knew the truth from start to finish, she would want to keep Lyra safe. She might extend some measure of that graciousness to Marisa herself, in spite of all her sins.

"I see."

"I'm sorry," Marisa adds before Mary can say anything else. "You said when you searched for me that you couldn't find anything I'd written. And that's true: you won't find anything published under _my_ name. Ever. The Magisterium publishes the work of men exclusively."

Mary's face instantly hardens into tempered steel. "They stole your work," she says, and there is no question in her voice or mercy in her gaze.

Marisa allows her blasphemous, farcical imagination to surge to life, and pictures Mary as something like the pagan witch goddesses, or their monsters of vengeance with snakes for hair and eyes that turn men to stone. Something far more real and visceral than the stuffy, limited divinity of the Authority. There would be no forgiveness from a woman like her. Only recompense and atonement, years of work and suffering, and Marisa is deeply grateful that the target of Mary's righteous rage has not settled upon her forehead. She feels the thrill of her indignation, that someone has finally seen the injustice wrought upon her, and sneers with wrath and disdain.

"I would be happy to help you get credit," Mary grinds out. "That work is _yours_ , and I'll not tolerate a plagiarist."

The simmering edge of her words tickles the base of Marisa's skull and she feels the air between them charge with something tight and meaningful that she cannot name. It unfurls dangerously in her stomach, disrupting the poison inside her, and she swallows thickly.

"Thank you," she says. "I'm going to get it back when things have settled. All of it."

"Good," says Mary lowly. She huffs a laugh and all of her anger dissipates into the cheerfulness that comprises her basest form. "I'm sorry, I get a bit vexed about academic dishonesty. And hyperconservative churches. And the mistreatment of women and children. Honestly, you could have gone down a checklist of all the things that upset me most."

Marisa tilts her head. She doesn't know how to do it: this switch back to candor and calm. It's not something that comes naturally to her or a skill she's had the chance to learn. For Mary there is a quick return to contentment and, for all her clemency, there is nothing submissive or disingenuous about it, nothing performative in her manner. Only the truth of her all the time.

Marisa can approximate it. She can flip from sorrow to anger, letting it fester as she processes, but it always returns to neutrality, to blankness like an open wound. She can even mask it with a smile and coquettish giggles and dragging fingernails. She lies and keeps lying, spinning her tales like a weaver at the loom, layer upon layer of fabric, a gambeson to keep her safe. She can swallow a mouthful of needles like all the years of carnage she's endured, slicing new wounds into her ravaged throat.

She wonders if Mary ever hurts the way she does.

"I'm very sorry," Marisa automatically replies.

"No! No. Please, no apologies necessary. It's all the more impressive that you're getting away from it. I can't begin to fathom what you've survived." Mary leans against the armrest of her chair, the bottom of her mug flat in her upturned palm. "You know I never asked: how do you like the coffee? Only the finest pre-ground, discounted, generic beans for me."

"Ah," says Marisa, relieved by the change in subject and lightening of mood. It's rare in her experience that someone else steers the conversation back to enjoyable territory. Typically the burden falls on her shoulders. "It's _artisanal_. You can really get the notes of mass production on the mouthfeel."

Mary smiles impishly, an amused exhale ghosting across her lips. "You are a lady of taste and distinction, I see. You know, I meant to tell you earlier: I like your French braid. Very professional," she says, and her shining eyes trail the twists of Marisa's hair from the crown of her head to where her braid rests across one shoulder.

Marisa thickly wonders if this is some sort of fumbling flirtation and, if it is, why it warms her skin like sinking into a bath. Mary gives her such a feeble compliment when hundreds of hopeful lovers have sung her passionate songs, written her effusive poetry, bought her opulent gifts, and she denied them all with vicious glee and without a moment's consideration. Perhaps this is simply the way women always talk to each other in this world. She amends the thought: she doesn't even know how women talk to each other in _her_ world.

"Thank you. I learned it from Youtube."

And, though none of her questions are answered, she likes the way Mary delights in this admission, her pink lips spread into a wide smile.

* * *

"I would have given her an un-stale cookie if I'd had one!" Mary feigns mock-outrage, her hands in the air. "I'm not in the habit of feeding children biscuits that are six months past expiration." Her hands lower as she purses her lips. "Well, no, that's not quite true either. I have some very dubious granola bars at home. But it was all I had!"

Marisa laughs, incredulous, and abandons all sense of decorum in Mary's study because the conversation comes easily and her amusement can be loud and unladylike and candid here. She cannot decide what delights her more: Lyra's innate, demanding spirit constantly drawing in the support of total strangers who've no reason to trust what she says, or Mary Malone's childlike sincerity, and immediate willingness to give all she has to a bewildering girl who stormed into her office. They are both wonderfully excessive creatures.

"I'm sure she would have eaten it regardless," Marisa says, and a memory twinges in her mind like the discordant note of a cello, of Lyra and her black hole of a stomach sucking up anything she put before her, and Marisa watching with pride as she devoured her meal. She wanted her daughter to grow up to be big and strong and powerful, and she would never pull on Pantalaimon's hair until Lyra wretched and couldn't keep her food down. She would never tell Lyra _mind your figure_ as she vomited her dinner beneath the dining room table.

"She certainly tried," says Mary, and her face softens with concern. "Are you all right?"

Marisa pulls herself back to the present and sits knotted up at an impasse like the splintered, contradictory woman she is. She has already overstepped by remaining here so long, by giving so much away when she has so few walls left to protect herself, but she stares at Mary's fingers as they interlace around her empty mug, and she wishes instead that they would cover her hand like they did yesterday.

"We have had a difficult time lately," she says, surprised by the honest, bone-weary tone of her voice.

Her reply is trifling and answers nothing, but Mary merely nods as if she understands what she needs for now. It would kill Marisa not to know these details if their roles were reversed; she would claw her way through the veil until her fingers were bloody stubs, but Mary doesn't press, just as she promised. The light from the window shines orange in Mary's hair like a fiery halo, and Marisa realizes in a shattering rush that the sunset glows behind her.

"When did it get so late?" she asks, more to herself than anything, embarrassed to be just as captivated by Mary in person as she was by her conference video.

But Mary replies, "No kidding. Time flies." She rises from her desk to retrieve Marisa's coat and scarf from the rack.

"Same time tomorrow then?" Mary asks. "If you can sneak away, of course."

"Tomorrow," Marisa agrees, buttoning up her coat. She slips her phone out of her coat pocket and suppresses a groan at the 6 messages and 2 calls from Carlo, each more desperate and furious than the last. At least the invitation lightens her suddenly sour mood.

"In trouble with the warden?"

Marisa sighs, "Yes, I'm afraid so."

"Don't they know you're an international woman of mystery, free to come and go as you please?"

She shouldn't respond to that, but a mischievous laugh escapes her lips. "Not everyone is quite as perceptive as you."

"Well, I hope to keep catching you between secret spy missions. I can promise more mediocre coffee to sweeten the deal, or we could go back to Common Ground if you're feeling something more interesting."

"Your current artisanal coffee suits my needs," says Marisa.

"Fantastic."

Mary takes an imperceptible step toward her before _tsk_ ing with a shake of her head. It takes Marisa a moment to register that she tried to hug her, and Marisa didn't move an inch in return. Mary stands with her hands clasped tightly before her, struggling to mutter out, "Sorry, habit. The touching."

An ugly thought surfaces first, as it often does: she could wield such power over Mary, who trusts her on some level now and has made it more than apparent that she would do anything to keep her and Lyra safe. She could twist her up and bleed her dry, and leave her like she leaves all the others. The notion jars and nauseates her like Lyra's screams in Bolvanger, when she was locked in that wretched, indispensable machine that was meant for other children than her. Her cruelty is not for Mary either; Mary is exempt from it. Marisa can't pretend to fully understand this compulsion, and doesn't have the time or energy to question the depth of her abrupt, alarming attachment. Not when Mary stares up at her in the darkening light of her study with an apology on her face, contrite and sorrowful.

She isn't worthy of it. A long-stifled yawning in Marisa's chest calls out for anyone willing to respond. Someone like Mary who will coax her back into warmth, and hold her safely like she holds the world around her. The weakness is lurid and scandalous, indecent because she _wants_ it, when she believed all her cravings and desires had been ground out of her by the millstone of her miserable existence.

The hard, logical voice in her mind that so often protects her demands normalcy and camouflage; it reminds her that a hug is an everyday farewell for friends, a normal touch, and her heart does not pound because she is afraid of it. The voice appeals and emboldens, and justifies the softer tone beneath that concedes to more dangerous ideas. She is like a moth to the flame, willingly incinerated by Mary's vitality and commiseration, wishing she could drink in the blue of her eyes and fill her lungs with it so that even if she drowned she would be part of her, a molecular overlay, a purification. She would die knowing how it feels to be her, to have Mary inside of her, hallowing unholy ground by her mere presence.

They stand so close she can see the creases in the corners of Mary's eyes and how they start every one of her smiles, blazing a path her lips are sure to follow. The words leave Marisa's mouth in an inelegant mumble, "You can hug me."

Mary closes the gap between them and pulls her into a quick embrace, warm and protective, and Marisa heaves a shuddering sigh, flattening her palms awkwardly against her back, trying with all of her pitiful might not to cling conspicuously to their tenuous connection, not to be too eager for her— but she _covets_ like the universe does, hungry for perpetual expansion, an intensity that leaves her insensate and colorblind— and prays into the coppery curls of Mary's hair that her traitorous blood won't betray her with a blush.

"See you tomorrow," says Mary, peeling back gently. Marisa turns away from her at once, adjusting her scarf in a frenzy. She nods jerkily, unable to swallow the lump in her throat.

Mary opens the door for her, and leans in the doorframe as Marisa brushes past her. She calls, "Stay warm out there."

"I will," says Marisa so weakly she's not certain Mary can even hear it over the staccato of her rapidly retreating footsteps.

She hunches into her scarf, hiding her red face from the doorman as she bolts through the exit, chiding herself for being so reckless. The cold evening air does nothing to quell the heat of her cheeks or the immodest pounding of her heart. She tells herself again that Mary Malone isn't pretty in any way that matters, but with every hurried step the sentiment feels more and more like a treacherous lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marisa just goes home and watches the [Mary Malone fancam](https://twitter.com/schereeer/status/1345900744558473219?s=20) for six straight hours.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire chapter is just nerd foreplay.

When she arrives at Mary's office the second time there is a young man already inside, and Marisa immediately bristles at his presence.

She has seen enough of arrogant boys with their starched collars and lewd commentaries, their half-whispered words about disgusting, debasing fantasies that no holy man should wish upon his worst enemy. She knows what they want to do to her, what some of them have tried, until she bites her tongue and bides her time, sliding away to maintain as much decorum as her shame will allow. Manipulating them is too useful a tool to reject, and is far simpler when they view her entire worth in pounds of flesh.

"Marisa," Mary gestures to a chair beside her. "Please, take a seat. We'll be done in just a moment."

The boy, shaggy haired and barely on the cusp of adulthood, cranes his neck from Mary's scribbled corrections in his notebook to politely nod to Marisa. He turns back to Mary and says, "Ma'am, I didn't mean to take so much of your time. I really appreciate the help. Dr. Tsvetkova just teaches very quickly."

"And she erases her chalkboard as soon as she starts a new line. I know it's a struggle to keep up, but it's quite all right, Henry." The pencil taps on an untidy equation. "Do you see what you're missing here?"

Marisa removes her coat and sits with her hands in her lap, fingers resting against the hem of her pencil skirt as she gazes down at the notebook before her. It's littered with slapdash equations for electrons in various electromagnetic fields, and she sees at once that the boy has ignored an essential component in the conservation of energy. Mary gently prods him, "The electron's potential energy _decreases_."

"Yes," he slowly replies, clearly not seeing the issue. His eyes dart up to Marisa's impassive face, but she gives him nothing.

"Because the potential energy lost by the electron becomes kinetic energy," Mary adds, unperturbed by his slowness.

"Yes," he drags out again.

Mary continues, eyeing him, "So that means..."

Marisa leans forward this time, impatient for his departure, and taps his bumbling handiwork with a well-manicured black nail, "You're missing a negative sign, Henry."

Then several things happen at once, like a bubble bursting into ten thousand gossamer droplets before her eyes. Henry leans back and dramatically groans, slapping his forehead, and Mary presses into her right side and barks a laugh. She places a warm hand on Marisa's knee and says, "So quick! You cut right to the chase."

Marisa freezes for a moment, her breath shallow and fast as she smiles back at her, processing too slowly that their amusement is not at her expense, unused to being the cause of spiteless laughter. Mary's hand drifts away and the moment passes, drowned out by Henry's sheepish groans, but the giddiness remains in Marisa's chest, frothing and bubbling with a distinct but unfamiliar pleasure. The imprint of Mary's fingertips still lingers on her knee like the tingle of alpha hydroxy acid that once splashed against the pale skin of her forearm in the chemistry laboratory two decades ago: she watched with curiosity as the red splotch on her flesh grew brighter and wider, wondering through the pain if her body could contain it.

Henry grins widely, and doesn't remind her so much of the awful boys in seminary when he looks up at her and Mary with genuine gratitude. "God, I'm dumb. Thank you- uh, I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name. Doctor...?"

His words strike her like a lighting bolt. Marisa sits statue-still, her fingernails digging into the bloodless knuckles of her left hand, hearing the echoes of laughter as she passed like a wraith through the wood-paneled halls of the Magisterium; she remembers the mistrustful eyes of the old men at Jordan who knew her as Asriel's jezebel, the woman who warped his mind with perversions of equality; she feels the bell-ringing force of being backhanded, once and only once, by her father when she snuck into his study one night to read his astronomy books, and how quickly he learned that her bruises showed like spilled paint on a blank canvas, but her daemon's injuries were far easier to hide from prying eyes.

The kindest thing Marisa's parents ever did for her was make her hollow. Her voice catches in her throat like a red-hot ember and she sits before them both, immobile and empty, eyes pinned to the floor, paralyzed by the need to answer.

"Coulter," Mary supplies on her behalf. 

"Thank you, Dr. Coulter, Dr. Malone." He gathers up his papers and stuffs them into a dirty green backpack, bobbing his head to both of them a final time. "I won't forget my negatives again, I promise you that."

"Have a good day, Henry. Do your homework and don't be late for class," he opens his mouth to protest and she raises a finger, " _especially_ the ones at 8 a.m."

He playfully sighs, shuffling out of the room. Mary frowns as soon as the door closes, leaning one elbow on her desk as she shifts to face her. "I apologize. I shouldn't have given him your name when you didn't. I speak before thinking sometimes, and that was very rude—"

"No, it's fine," Marisa paints on a quick smile that doesn't manage to reach her eyes. "But I never received a doctorate."

"I see," says Mary. She doesn't shy away from the information or offer any misguided sympathy on the subject, but she shrugs, "Well, I think to dear Henry you're the most intelligent woman alive, and I'm inclined to agree with him at this point. You're awfully quick on the uptake."

Marisa heaves a held breath. "You pointed right at his error. I don't know how he missed it."

Mary raises her eyebrows and licks her lips, rising from her seat to pour them both coffee. "I imagine he was rather distracted."

Marisa follows the rustle of her navy blazer, its colors deep and dark beneath her chestnut curls, as she hovers over her small coffee pot. "By what?"

Mary chuckles, sucking her lips into her mouth. She hands Marisa a mug, bright eyes dancing about her upturned face. " _Oh_ , you're serious," her smile settles lightly. "By you. Henry was distracted by you. For obvious reasons."

Marisa's eyes narrow, suspicious and confused. She hadn't intended on interrupting them in the first place until he failed twice in a row to find a satisfactory answer, and she certainly had no intention of manipulating the boy. She had barely spoken to him at all, as fixated as she was on solving the equation to make him leave.

"Ah," Marisa says, as if any of her questions were answered.

Mary returns to the seat beside her and stretches her legs beneath her desk, her cheeks pink beneath the overhead light, obviously a touch embarrassed. Marisa spares her the mortification of further explanation, though she wants to hear her say more on the subject with that endearing, conspicuous blush, and isn't certain from whence her influx of mercy came. She never spares anyone, least of all herself.

But she changes the subject for both their sakes, "I didn't realize you specialized in electric forces."

"Oh, I don't. I know a bit, given what's required for astrophysics, but undergrads, you know. They think we can do it all and I'd rather not tell them otherwise." She gestures vaguely with her mug, "I'd lose my academic advisor mystique."

"Well, we can't have that," Marisa concedes. "Though it seems you _can_ do it all."

"Says the woman who noticed a missing negative sign from three meters away."

Effusive warmth spreads down her body at the compliment, and she hides her smile behind an orange mug emblazoned with the curling spirals of a bubble chamber and heavy text that reads _High Energy Particle Physics Group Symposium_ on the front.

Mary continues, "At least the postgrads know I'm human. If they've got a question they know to give me some time to research, especially when it's outside of my area of expertise."

"Tell me about that," Marisa traces the handle of her mug, and she doesn't miss the way Mary's eyes trail her motions, hooded and perceptive, "your area of expertise."

Mary crosses her legs, one betrainered foot bouncing in a steady rhythm, and her eyes meet Marisa's again, all amused confidence. "You know you're opening Pandora's Box asking an astrophysicist about her work."

"I've got all day," Marisa replies, "and curiosity has always gotten the better of me."

Mary smiles, lifting her mug. "Cheers to that."

* * *

Usually she loathes listening to her colleagues blather on, all condescension or ineptitude, but Mary explains her theories as easily as she breathes, and leaves room at her table for Marisa's thoughts and questions and challenges. Mary hangs on her words in return, fascinated and encouraging. Marisa has never shared her own studies like this, though she is careful to be vague, without the niggling voice in the base of her skull reminding her that it would be taken away, again and again, and her hands are ever bound by the holy order of the Magisterium. Her contributions will be politicized and leveraged and stolen because she is only a woman and science belongs to the men. That is simply the way of her world.

But that is not the way in this world.

Mary Malone runs her own department. Her students and peers respect her without the need for lies and simpering sensuality. She wears threadbare sweaters and scuffed up shoes and not a trace of makeup, and they still dip their heads at her in the hall and tell her good morning and ask her for advice with earnest admiration plastered on their faces. Marisa barely tempers the urge to stare at her in wonder, questioning how she can give so much of herself constantly and still cultivate such zeal for life. She is whip smart and energetic and a bit waggish, and Marisa appreciates the rebellious streak in Mary, the subtle promise that borders on a threat: crossing swords with her is an indelible line with grave consequences. The weight of her convictions is commendable.

_Enchanting_ , she modifies in the privacy of her mind, and the thought sends her heart leaping ungracefully behind her ribs. Marisa lowers her gaze, grateful for the curtain of hair that falls and at least partially hides her expression.

She learns to translate quickly as Mary speaks, flipping through books and pointing at her computer screens, animated and cheerful. A core is called a nucleus in this world, unmatter is an antiparticle, a block is called a quark. The quarks' spins are much the same, four of their six titles match too— structured and sensible with top, bottom, up, and down— until they explode into a naming scheme of pure whimsy, using charm and strange where her world uses young and old.

The question _why_ slips out and Marisa berates herself for interrupting Mary, and betraying her own ignorance.

"Etymologically, I can't say. But I suppose it's because they're so strange and charming." Mary winks impishly over her coffee in a dark blue mug that reads _Duke Psychology & Neuroscience_ in tidy white letters.

The gesture is unsophisticated and direct, and inescapably alluring, and Marisa feels herself sinking into the gravity of Mary's authenticity, the cornflower blue of her eyes and the way they make her long for something bright and fresh and totally unlike the shadows in which she is most comfortable. It takes a moment for Marisa to huff a laugh, but she does because she cannot help herself from releasing the pressure that's built in her chest.

Marisa mutters, "You would know all about that, wouldn't you?"

"And you call me charming?" Mary smiles widely, and the corners of her eyes crinkle. Marisa mirrors her because it's impossible not to, and her stomach flutters at the feedback loop of Mary seeing her and her seeing Mary, and both of them grinning like fools because of it. 

The abrupt intensity of the attachment frightens her, and she tears eyes away before Mary's radiance blinds her, before she is caught staring again. She's never had a friend before, only allies and lovers, and most of those she never wanted in the first place. She feels her own center of gravity shift like a tumblers in a lock, the key's teeth a perfect fit, finally at the intersection of what she needs and what she wants, and she realizes in a jilted rush how dissatisfied she has been all her life.

"I have a few things to take care of this afternoon," says Mary, "but if you're free tonight, I'd love to cook you dinner. Or we could go somewhere, whichever's easier for you."

It should shake her, she recognizes, this momentous confession and its upheaval in her heart, but Mary is still smiling at her fondly and the look grounds her safely to the earth. She should refuse, but she doesn't, because she is tethered to Mary Malone like an electron speeding to some unknown end, content to be propelled by the kinetic energy of the magnetic field around it, and because in the span of two days she has lodged more faith in Mary Malone's open hands than she has placed in a lifetime of the Magisterium's closed fists.

"I would like that, if you cooked," Marisa replies with a telling shortness of breath, and she wonders if falling into Mary's inexorable orbit was fated from the start, another prophecy in a holy book she doesn't believe in.

* * *

Returning to Carlo's pretentious, unpleasant home after the sanctuary of Mary's office is a slap in the face. He prodded her incessantly for details the moment she appeared on his surveillance cameras, following her like an unwanted shadow until she snapped and stalked to the guest bedroom, ignoring his protests, swamped by how much she despised being alone with him.

As soon as she's inside she heaves a sigh of relief, removing her coat and scarf and pretending she cannot hear the slamming doors that boom from the first floor.

Ozymandias greets her from the windowsill with a giddy chirp and swish of his orange tail, his eyes too knowing, too brimming with a delight she isn't ready to admit.

"What?" she asks, unsmiling.

But he only blinks back at her, shifting his weight until she scoffs and falls to the bed, kicking her heels to the floor. She checks the time on her cell phone— she still has three hours until dinner, and it won't take her long to get ready— before she Googles quarks and other fundamental particles, supplementing what Mary told her with a variety of articles that don't hold her interest long.

Her mind drifts to Lyra, and what she must have thought of Mary, the female scholar with a department of her own, who gave her stale cookies and had no sly double meaning to her words. She cannot find it in herself to be jealous of their relationship though, as limited as it is, it remains more pleasant and uncomplicated than anything she has with her own daughter. When Marisa considers how different things would be if she'd had Mary on her side from the start, not Carlo, not McPhail, her fingers grip the phone so hard she fears shattering the glass cover into a thousand pieces, slicing open her hand and watching it bleed because the pain does not faze her and the pooling blood is hers and hers alone: her choice to make, her cup from which to drink.

She blinks hard, raking her fingers through her hair. Looking back will serve neither herself, nor Lyra. Marisa worries the inside of her cheek, wondering instead what to expect from dinner alone with Mary, the sort of invitation that would have certainly pointed to ulterior motives from the men in her past and from Carlo's unwelcome courting in the present. But Mary is both simpler and more complicated than they are, and with her Marisa treads new territory without a map or compass or any experience to her name. She cannot distinguish her kindness from reciprocity, and cannot discern which is the more dangerous outcome, or if somehow Mary wants to be good to her but also wants more than friendship from her, so both notions are equally likely to send Marisa to an early grave.

She wouldn't mind if that was the case. It flushes her skin with unbearable warmth how very _little_ she would mind.

The brand of Mary's touches on her body still ache like a phantom limb: her thumbprint on the back of Marisa's hand, her index finger against her knee, the heat of her arms wrapped around her apprehensive frame. She wanted more, each time, every time, to be lost in the temptation of Mary's skin and softness of her lips, to never have to question how something that made her feel so safe and accepted could be evil.

She sits up in the bed and swallows hard, pushing all the memories of Mary's charm deep into the chasm of her mind. She cannot afford this compromise, the risk of it, the vulnerability. It is more like Pandora's Box than she once believed, but her sin is the horror inside and the weakness will devour her whole with the sort of longing that's punishable by death in her world. Certainly, they would kill her for these impulses: a single soldier with a single bullet because the Magisterium does not waste full firing squads on executing deviants—

Ozymandias jumps onto the foot of bed and she starts, ripped from her macabre daydream. His blank button eyes stare up at her without comment or judgment, and he sits in total stillness. He needs no words to speak.

She gazes down at his emptiness, her lips pursed. She can keep a secret better than anyone she knows. There is no room in her for regret, no mercy for doubt. She can take what she wants and bear down with malevolence and vengeance on all those who give her pause. If she is bound to be a sinner then she will be the queen of them, and no man will stop her from doing as she wishes, especially in this world where she is free as a matter of birthright.

Ozymandias curls into a comfortable ball, satisfied by her newfound resolve.

She settles back against the pillows, refocused, detached, and regal again, and occupies her time with reading until it's time to prepare for dinner. As she brushes her hair and touches up her makeup, she doesn't grace the curious tilt of Ozymandias' head with a reply, but neither does she remove him from the bed. He is her reminder that she can do the things that others wouldn't dream of trying.

She slips back into her black heels and coat, heavy against the light silk of her green shirt, and makes it to the front door before Carlo intercepts her.

"Where are you going?" he demands. 

"Out. I have a lead on Lyra," she tells him in her most unyielding tone. 

"Out _where_?"

"How many times must you bore me with this conversation?" She wheels on him, hissing, "Everything I do is to cover for your _sloppiness_ , and you have no say in how I choose to make right your increasingly grievous failure to locate my daughter. Now stay here and wait like a good boy, and let me do what I do best." She strides through the front door into the brisk wind outside, then, just to spite him, casually quips, "Don't wait up."

The moment she passes the range of his surveillance cameras she turns off her phone. He won't interrupt her again.

Marisa doesn't have a name for her desires and doesn't particularly care to find one; she cannot remember the last time she's wanted something that was in her grasp: attainable and mutual and without reservations. The invitation was presented on a silver platter and Marisa could hardly refuse something so delicious, made all the more tantalizing by how sincerely it was given, even if Mary's motive was for kindness' sake alone.

She wants to be alone with Mary Malone, and Carlo Boreal doesn't have a chance in hell of stopping her.

* * *

Marisa, however, stands a decent chance of stopping herself. She loiters in Mary's tiny garden, staring at the red brick exterior of her home, and thinks, as she often does, that she is making a mistake.

The dwindling daylight casts long shadows behind her, and her conviction drains away when confronted with the reality of the situation. A different sort of fear swirls in her mind now, as dark as the toxic clouds that pour from her mouth when she speaks, an anxiety that Mary will realize the truth of her, the transparency of her, quite quickly if they spend too long together. She will solve the equation of Marisa Coulter and realize the problem at once: she is all untapped potential that can't work itself out, not because she is missing her negative sign but because she has a surplus of them. Vindictive and superfluous, with substandard answers that are inferior by nature, incomplete and unworthy because they came from _her_. She fears not that Mary will uncover the lies and omissions of her story but that she will see through the core of her being itself, and the conclusion of her research will be wholly unsatisfactory.

Marisa chews her lip, her chest rising and falling rapidly with every shallow breath. She hates this uncertainty, and her deplorable lack of confidence. She cannot decide if it is a small consolation or a greater disappointment in her own nerves failing her, not the fear of punishment from the church, though the only logical outcomes of her considerations remain disappointingly similar: she shouldn't be here.

Just as she turns to leave, the front door swings open and Mary calls out, "Marisa! Right house! So sorry, I forgot to turn on the porch light. Come on in. I'll get your coat."

Over her blouse and slacks Mary wears a peach-colored apron patterned with a splash of pastel flowers, and wields a large cutting knife in her right hand. Marisa's hesitation evaporates at the sight before her, replaced by a tentative smile and duck of her head.

"Thank you," she manages, her heels noisy on the stone stairs. She shrugs out of her coat and hands it over as soon as she crosses the threshold. "I'd have wandered the street all night."

Mary gives her a one-armed hug, careful to keep the knife away, and says, "I'm sure someone would have taken you in eventually. The lady up the street feeds stray cats."

Marisa leans into her and laughs, puffing away strands of Mary's hair, inhaling the scent of her citrusy shampoo and the savory onions and garlic wafting from the kitchen. "I've had a bit of a later start than I intended, but I got some wine and a charcuterie board to make up for it," Mary says, slightly abashed. Her free hand rests on Marisa's hip for a moment after she pulls back and turns away from her, and she is suddenly too conscious of the missing warmth of Mary's palm and the impulsive courage it wove through her body, but she follows her path to the kitchen.

"Then I suppose you're conditionally forgiven," Marisa says to her back. "Pending dinner."

"That's all a girl can ask for. Though if I botch beef stew I think some divine punishment is certainly in order."

Marisa takes a seat on a stool beside the kitchen island, and Mary pours them both a glass of dark red 2010 Piccini Poggio Teo Chianti Classico— not that Marisa understands at all what that means, but she would certainly keep the information stored away for future reference— before returning her attention to a cast iron stock pot. Marisa glances around the house, hungrily taking in as much of the tidy space as she can before Mary turns around again. The house is simple, comfortable, and refreshing, not unlike its owner, a far cry from Boreal's gilded prison-museum of curiosities. She has little interest in anthropology, regardless of the financial value of his purloined collections, but finds herself curious about all the books, knick-knacks, and picture frames that line the shelves in Mary's living room.

"What do you think of the Chianti?" Mary glances back at her, lowering the heat of her oven.

Marisa takes another sip, a less distracted one, and says, "It's delicious. Bolder than I expected."

"Ah, 'fortune favors' and all that."

Marisa nods, though she has no concept of what she's referencing. Mary continues, "It's one of my favorites. They served it at the Nobel Banquet in 2016, not that I was invited or anything. But it's nice with regular dinners too." She gestures to the wooden charcuterie board piled high with fruit, sausages, and cheese, and says, "Help yourself. The stew will take a while."

Mary resumes slicing carrots with her large knife, pausing only to pop a cheese cube into her mouth. The casual motion is pleasant and normal, free of the covert guilt Marisa sometimes sees from politicians' wives at banquets, as if consuming the food they need to survive is a sordid, shameful affair. She understands the complex after experiencing it firsthand, though hers came from external sources. Her mother's words were as sharp as her nails. 

But her parents are long dead and the only thing she sees is the dimple of Mary's lopsided smile, so Marisa follows suit and selects a cheese cube of her own. It's something surprisingly spicy and sharp, peppering her tongue as her eyes roam the kitchen again. They settle on a picture hanging beneath a circular magnet on the refrigerator. In it Mary stands closely beside another woman, smiling widely, her mittened hands resting on the shoulders of two children before her, the quartet of them small against the background of a coniferous forest. A sudden ping of envy sparks painfully in her mind, but she keeps her face carefully neutral.

"Tell me about that picture."

"That's my older sister and her kiddos. Hellions, all of them," Mary smiles, her dicing temporarily suspended by the affection that blooms on her face. "We went to Yellowstone a few years ago for some hiking. We saw a moose on the first day! I was astonished by the size of it."

A knot unravels between Marisa's shoulder blades and the petty, childish anger that welled up in her so unexpectedly dies down with it. Instead of seething in her own venom she yearns to contribute to Mary's excitement, to trigger it herself, to be the source of her shining eyes and wonderment.

"I imagine moose are very impressive. I've never seen one in person, but I have seen a polar bear or two," she softly says.

"Polar bears!" Mary exclaims. "How did you manage that treat? One of those arctic expeditions? What an adventure. I've heard they're remarkable if you can afford it."

The echo of Lyra's shrieking through Bolvanger's reinforced steel doors drifts through her mind with numb disquiet. She remembers the snowflakes falling and gunshots screaming, and how clammy the skin of Sister Clara's neck was when she pinned her to the ground like a submissive dog, choking her for the sake of it, for all their similarities and all their failures, until Clara wept for mercy and the frenzy collapsed around Marisa like a bombed building. She stroked Clara's awful, empty face, and shushed her with apologies before rising to her feet and leaving her to die, a sobbing husk curled up in the snow. If the cold didn't kill her, the witch certainly would.

"It's an unforgiving place," Marisa adds. Mary surveys her face in a way that reminds her uncomfortably of Ozymandias, saying nothing but knowing everything, and Marisa crushes the memory to ash with a somber, fractured smile on her lips. She nods to the peeled potatoes beside the remaining carrots and, in the name of efficiency and distraction, asks, "Would you like any help?"

"I'd be glad for it," Mary says, blessing her with another smile. She pulls a second cutting board and knife from a drawer, and continues chatting as they work. "I've always wanted to go on an Alaskan cruise. I'm not one for the beach unless I feel like roasting to a crisp, but I'd certainly try my hand at Pacific coastal fishing. Or whatever kind of fishing you do for salmon."

Marisa chuckles, neatly dicing the potatoes. She can't recall the last time she cooked for herself. "I believe salmon are freshwater."

"So what's that then, fly fishing?" Mary thoughtfully lifts her wine glass to her lips before shaking her head, banishing the thought once and for all. "I should leave it to the damned bears."

Marisa laughs again without granting herself permission— she has never laughed so much in one day of her whole insufferable life, not without lacing it with contempt or ruefulness— and her throat is raw from it, unused to making the sound. Some part of her wants to smother it for painting such an unguarded picture of herself.

"Liked that, did you?" Mary grins.

In a world very different from this one, Marisa Coulter has decades of practiced aloofness and targeted flirting; her ability to manipulate is a fundamental force, natural and immutable like gravity pressing them to the surface of the earth, the core of her clever cruelties as irrefutable and unrelenting as the model of heliocentrism. But when she she glances up at Mary and the long curve of her pale eyelashes, clearly pleased by her amusement with her wine glass hovering before her chin, Marisa finds she doesn't have a single cohesive thought to call her own.

The knife in her grasp falters and she nearly cuts off her left index finger.

She slices open her flesh in one fell swoop, bleeding all over the potato and cutting board for a shocked moment before she lowers the blade and tilts up her palm to keep more from falling. The blood drenches her hand and wrist, pouring freely from the gouge between her first and second knuckle, and she is surprised by the viscosity of it, how the color nearly matches the shade of their wine.

"Oh!" Mary gasps, darting around her in a horrified blur that Marisa blearily follows. She rips a paper towel from the roll— far more convenient than the fabric towels of her world— and takes Marisa's hand into both of her own, pressing down gently to staunch the blood flow and elevating her hand between their faces. The pressure stings a little, but Marisa remains still.

"Are you all right?" Mary asks, her brow creased with worry. 

Marisa lingers on her lips, the scent of wine on her breath, and the way Mary cradles her hand with unspoken devotion, unconcerned with the blood that seeps through the paper and stains her own palms like a secondhand stigmata. The sting of the cut ripples down her arm, but it's worth the price, it's worth the balm of Mary pressing their hands together in prayer, and the surfacing pain gives her such sharp clarity that she cannot hide, even from herself. She is bleeding herself dry and doesn't want to be a solitary creature any more, not when the alternative feels like this.

"Yes," Marisa breathes, far too aware of the narrow space between them and the captivating angles of Mary's cheekbones. 

"You didn't make a peep," Mary murmurs and looks up at her, astonished. She reaches for another paper towel, expertly wrapping it around her finger and gently squeezing again. "What an impressive pain tolerance you have. I stub my pinky toe and cry for a fortnight." 

Marisa smiles and Mary's words hum in her veins, pleasure drowning out the depth of her cut, as if Mary lifts up her mask and sees through her looking-glass body; she studies the way Marisa barely reacted to carving her flesh to the bone like it was a matter of fact, an injury she deserved, a torment she welcomed as an old friend. Her only friend. Her wide blue eyes are mournful, fixated on Marisa's lips as if she longs to inhale the poisonous smog that ekes from her mouth with every breath, purifying the hot, acrid smoke in the sanctity of her own lungs.

"Mary," says Marisa.

"Yes?" she replies, her voice distant and dreamy.

"The onions. They're burning."

"Oh, god," Mary sighs.

She detaches herself from Marisa at once and the moment is lost, their lingering blushes and bloodstains the only remnants of their encounter. Mary washes her hands, stirs the pot, cleans the mess, and finds a bandage and peroxide for Marisa's cut all in one dizzying rush, clucking to herself as she dashes through the kitchen to clean her hands again, "Seems that conditional forgiveness isn't working out in my favor today."

"I can't blame you for this," Marisa lies, holding up her newly bandaged finger.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yes. I'm afraid you'll still have to impress me with dinner."

Mary dries her hands and leans across the island, sliding Marisa's wine glass to the fingertips of her right hand. She intones, "Blessed be thy mercy."

Marisa's back goes rigid at her words, hot and brazen as if she said something indecent, her fingers grazing the edge of the glass' circular base on the opposite side from Mary. She cannot help the response that slips out, cannot censor its blasphemous tone even if she tried, which she does not.

"Perhaps it isn't mercy so much as hunger."

And Mary, still leaning across the counter, does not look away when she smiles, "Then cheers to hungry women."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idk if 4 chapters is going to cut it for these two, but I'll keep you posted. Thank you so much for the comments and support! Y'all are the best!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are we declaring a national holiday because Simone Kirby said Mary Malone is "that kind of person," by which she meant A LESBIAN AND GAY FOR MARISA???? But really, she's blessed us all again. Amen, Simone. Amen. Please enjoy this chapter: we have finally earned the fic rating, comrades.
> 
> TW: internalized homophobia, misogyny, including some poorly timed flashbacks on Marisa's part

Mary won her forgiveness at dinner after all. The beef stew proved to be hearty and beautifully seasoned with oregano and rosemary, and the slight burnt tang of the onions detracted not at all from the flavor.

_Caramelized_ , Mary called them, though they were certainly not.

_Charred,_ Marisa corrected with a tilt of her fork, and Mary smiled, tipping her head in concession.

It suited the Chianti either way, and suited Marisa just as well. The conversation oscillated between them equally, pleasantly, _easily_ , although they ate perched on barstools, side-by-side and without formal place settings. Marisa would have scoffed in her own world had some would-be suitor presented a meal in these circumstances, but then she cannot determine why she would begin to place Mary in that category at all, or why the relaxed atmosphere feels so much more intimate than any dinner she's known before.

The proximity, she thinks, must be a large factor. Or the wine, or the distracting ache of her pulse in her sliced finger as Mary suggests they sit in the living room and finish off the bottle.

"Please, make yourself at home," Mary gestures to the sofa.

It is an infinitesimal movement— particle physics in action like the imperceptible but essential spin of a quark— the flicker of Mary's eyes to Marisa's legs as she slides off her heels and curls her feet beneath her on the couch cushions, making herself small. Mary lounges against the opposite armrest in response, her not-quite mirror image.

Mary's voice hums in her ears, a pleased sound like the crackling of a fire alive with fresh wood. "Don't know how you wear those all day," she says, eyeing the black pumps on her rug. "Walking in heels is a skill I never mastered."

"Leave that to me then, and keep your trainers. They suit you."

"Oh, thank you," the corner of Mary's lip quirks up. "I also think I look better with an unbroken neck."

Marisa laughs lightly, poised and precise in this new location, not quite relaxed for reasons she doesn't completely understand. She is unfettered and independent and all choices are her prerogative here in the quiet of Mary's home, but she finds the freedom harrowing, and the wry smile fixed on her does nothing to help for all the warmth it brings to Marisa's cheeks. Endless conversations pour out of Mary like water through a sieve, and Marisa has deeply enjoyed her intelligence and easy charisma. There is no pretention in her, no ulterior motives, except perhaps to learn more of Marisa, as a woman and a scholar and mother, though she doesn't hide her inclinations in any capacity.

"Can Lyra walk in heels? I mean, if she even wants to, of course."

The question doesn't trigger anything in her mind, no unhappiness or annoyance, and she finds the absence of her typical responses unnerving. The edge of protectiveness tingeing Mary's voice when she speaks of Lyra is rather becoming. Marisa sets down her half-empty glass of wine— tannins coat her tongue and lips, and she flushes with the sin of it, all dark chocolate and old oak and sweet plum— and she tears her eyes away from the low coffee table to fix them back on Mary Malone, who follows each of her movements, glass pressed to her lips.

Mary sits in her stillness, unmovable and unafraid, as if staking her claim in the earth and refusing to allow another to take it. There is certainty and security in her tranquility: the firm, steady outline of a woman who has never had to run, and will never apologize for her presence. Mary doesn't dance along fourth story balconies in the dead of night, or sever other people's children to protect her own. If Mary Malone had a daemon, she would never hurt it.

"She hasn't had much chance to try," Marisa says lowly, surprised by the truth of her words. "But I'm certain she could do anything she set her mind to."

"Mm, I believe it. She is your daughter."

Marisa can offer only a bemused exhale, and a faint shrug of her shoulders. She has received a detailed enumeration of compliments from admirers about her looks, her cleverness, her voice— the intelligent ones compliment her work— but she cannot recall this sort of praise by proxy, the transitive property of flattery: Lyra is born of her, and Lyra is good, therefore she is good. No one has ever complimented her child in the first place; she is too wild and resolute for them to understand her nature.

She shifts her weight, hot beneath her silk collar, and glosses over the books littering Mary's bookshelves, eclectic and well-worn, and her shoulders tense at the sight of the tome that has near-singlehandedly ruined her life with its dogma, as innocuous-looking as ever despite the blood drawn in its defense. _It must be a sin_ , she thinks, _to create so much violence by simply existing. Better to burn the source; better to be ignorant of its words and eat the fruit of knowledge without fear of reprisal, without punishment. Adam and Eve deserved better._

"The Bible?" she asks, and the hard, customary edge to her voice returns. She hadn't realized how blunted she'd become, dull in Mary's presence, a knife's edge worn away to nothingness. She swallows hard at her inattentiveness; it all happened much too quickly.

"Mhmm, King James," Mary explains. "I assume Lyra told you my history."

"Bits and pieces," Marisa lies. "She wished to respect your privacy, as do I."

Mary ruefully smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkling like they always do, as she thumbs the stem of her wine glass. Marisa studies the lines on her face quietly, a map to a place she's never been, intriguing and spellbinding and vibrant. She knows Mary's mother never told her to smile less, lest she wrinkle early. She knows Mary wouldn't have listened if she had because the lines on her face are hers, earned fair and square, from a life lived well and authentically. Mary prizes them, her laugh lines and crow's feet, and Marisa thinks in a dizzying rush that fills her head with fog that they _should_ be prized, because they are honest and lovely like she is.

"It's uncanny what she did with that alethiometer. I'd still like to talk to her about that one day." She sips her wine thoughtfully, licking at the stain of cloying redness on her lower lip. "I was a nun for nearly a decade. Actually, I received my doctorate in a habit."

The notion jars her; it feels inappropriate, too close to the corner Marisa herself would have been thrust into if she hadn't been sullied, if she wasn't a ruined woman, a widower with a bastard child and no allegiance but the Magisterium. Shoved into a musty, forgotten convent like Sister Clara and her wide, weepy eyes, and her little white dog daemon who howled as it burst into a thousand fragmented shards of golden Dust. And Clara wailed and wailed until the guillotine fell, then she was silent, reduced to a pathetic, mindless weakling. She was so hideous that Marisa preferred her screaming and made it so, choking her in the snow. Though when she came back to her senses the ugliness of Clara's weeping crippled her: she held only a void, an outline, a woman just as empty as she is.

"I think I joined to convince myself that I had a faith at all," Mary continues slowly. "Or that if— if I could only be more devout, that God would reveal himself to me. That, if I worked hard enough for His glory, he would make known his plan." She raises an eyebrow. "Didn't pan out, I'm afraid."

Marisa tilts her head, eyes fixed on the sad turn of Mary's lips. She is mistaken, she realizes now. Sister Clara was not at all like Mary, who would have fought her tooth and nail, who would have never lost her mind or her daemon or her will. A thrill courses up her spine: Mary would have killed her for that laying on of hands in the gunpowder-stained snow of Bolvanger. Finally, someone worthy to pin her down and choke the life from her veins the way she deserves. Finally, someone who would stop her. Finally, _finally_ , a reckoning.

She reaches for her wine to clear her mind. Her voice is feather soft when, desperate for a distraction, she asks, "Why did you leave the order? A crisis of faith?"

"That," Mary watches her pointedly, storm clouds looming in her eyes, "and one other reason."

The answer does nothing to redirect her train of thought. It is much too late and the wine is too rich, and Marisa is engrossed with the stain on Mary's lower lip, the burgundy she wants to taste, and the unruly curls of copper on her head that belong in the valley of her fingers. It's too late for sin or regret now— those are distant concepts, doctrines that cannot hurt her here— and it frustrates her that they sit on opposite ends of the sofa, worlds apart.

"Tell me," Marisa murmurs.

An alluring heat builds low in her stomach when Mary doesn't flinch away but immediately obeys her. She lowers her glass from her lips, resting the base against her thigh as the stem slides between her fingers. Marisa knows what Mary is going to say; she feels the heat of her blood and sees the way her eyes shine, not with fear but trepidation. Even this world has its sordid limitations and bigotries, and Marisa burns with fury for these unspoken hatreds, lumping them on her own pyre, incinerating them with the multitude of ways she's been degraded and shackled. It prickles at the edges of her mask and her emptiness, clarifying an empathetic boundary she's never known before: it hurts far worse that Mary has suffered too.

"I'm a lesbian," says Mary softly. "And I learned that about myself a bit later than some do."

Marisa nearly shudders with the vulnerability before her, enduring and brave without sacrificing her gentleness. Mary has given her a sharpened blade, its point against her throat, and trusted that she wouldn't slit her open and bathe in the bloodshed. She doesn't know Marisa's emptiness or the dead witches and children in her wake, her footprints a glittering trail of Dust from severed daemons, and how sometimes she wishes she could slip once and for all from the balustrade of her London balcony and never have to face the things she's done.

Marisa studies the lines of her strong jaw and high cheekbones, and the tiny, hopeful smile tugging at her lips, and relishes the way Mary reads her in return. The seconds tick by on her crooked wristwatch with its black band and silver rim, but how she exists so defenseless, so on display, Marisa cannot fathom. She has never told a soul of her own attractions, barely acknowledging it within herself except to recognize that she felt the same about women as she did about men, though she dared not act on it. What fool would throw away her life to kiss some girl? Such perversions were punishable by death in the Magisterium if the council felt particularly peckish that day, and, unlike men, women could so infrequently gain her something useful that she couldn't acquire herself.

But the Magisterium isn't here, and this world is full of unimaginable freedoms. Her mouth is dry and her heartbeat thunders in her ears, and Mary's blue eyes are deeply curious and shining.

"How fortunate you realized exactly what you wanted," breathes Marisa, "and you were bold enough to take it."

Mary's hooded eyes linger on Marisa's lips a moment longer, dangerously contemplative and sensual, and her breath catches as she exhales, "I want to kiss you."

The days of blooming fascination and fellowship build up and bubble over into scalding hot blush like Marisa's never been kissed before, like she can't control her shallow breathing. She isn't a child; she isn't some demure woman who crumbles under another's attraction, all shy and meek, but Mary's confession is a sacred rite, disruptive and sweet. It is uncoerced, refreshing, _optional_ , and wholly untethered by demands or the threat of punishment. Marisa could label it a thousand ways in a feeble attempt to understand something outside of her experiences, but for all of her intelligence Mary is simple and uncomplicated. She watches her attentively, sweetly, and her face speaks volumes of understanding, maturity, and kindness.

Marisa is lost in it until the hardened, malicious academic in her disappears, replaced by something older, something that _feels_ and longs what has been denied. She is perplexed and aroused by the choices spread before her, in knowing that Mary would bear her no ill will, regardless of her response. She is truly free to refuse another's advances without repercussions for the first time in her life.

But if she is going to kiss a woman, how delightful for it to be Mary Malone with a wine stain on her lips.

"Then be bold," Marisa says.

And she isn't quite prepared when Mary smiles, slowly setting her wine on the coffee table. She unfurls her legs and slides across the sofa, gently taking Marisa's glass from her grasp, their fingers barely brushing, and she sets it beside her own wine without breaking eye contact. She rests her hands on either side of Marisa's thighs, just above her knees, delicately bracing her. Mary tilts her head up until they are nearly nose to nose, her exhales rich with the spice of Chianti, and she asks in a tantalizing whisper, "Would you like that, Marisa?"

The question constricts around Marisa's throat until she is tangled and unnerved, her cheeks a telling shade of red. She wants it desperately, more desperately than she has ever known, but the admission terrifies her and she wants to run or hide or do anything but confess her longing. But Mary draws her permission out of her, peering out from beneath long eyelashes. None of Marisa's other lovers have ever waited for a secondary confirmation when they tried to seduce her; some barely wait for the first, preferring instead to steal kisses and ignore winces and withdrawals, dragging her forward with clutching hands that force their way beneath her skirts. 

The silence and omissions and assumptions don't suit Mary Malone: she needs fulness and excess; certainty and consent. There is no pretense in her vulnerability, no underlying spite to rise up and lash out. She speaks plainly with a soft, endearing smile, and the full recognition that she could be refused.

Marisa accepts that she can't run now. She doesn't want to, but willingly gives her what little she has. She turns against her lips and murmurs, "Yes."

Mary kisses her. Their lips brush slowly, chastely, and Mary pulls back to gauge her response, a matching blush bright across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.

As soon as Marisa's lashes flutter open and their eyes meet, she takes a steadying breath, calming the rise and fall of her chest. A partition in her mind dissolves, the thick, protective shield that warns _do not become compromised_ , and her hands fly up to either side of Mary's face, desperately grabbing her— hungry for more touch, more connection, more _Mary_ — her thumbs on her cheeks, pulling her forward against her body until their mouths and chests are flush.

When Mary's tongue brushes against her lower lip, a wanton whimper drifts through the cozy living room and it takes Marisa the span of two gasping breaths to realize it came from her own throat. She opens her mouth greedily, her own tongue warm and wet against Mary's, her hands clinging to her clothes and her soft hair and gliding down the tender skin of her neck.

Without breaking their kiss, Mary leans Marisa against the armrest until her legs uncurl, and climbs into her lap, dragging her short fingernails up through Marisa's hair. She shudders at the tingling sensation and moans up into Mary's open mouth, pressing her breasts against Mary's guileless, pure heart. She has never had a woman straddling her lap— but suddenly understands the appeal: the view, the weight, the intimacy— and it sets all her veins aglow with warmth like a spiderweb catching the light of dawn. She wants more flesh and more contact, only pulling away long enough to peel off Mary's purple sweater and button-up shirt. Her thumbs graze the fabric of Mary's bra, stroking softly against the curve of her breasts, and her lips paint delicate lines down her neck and the ridge of her collarbone.

Marisa cannot bear the notion that something so lovely is a sin. For all their centuries of biblical exegesis the holy men of the Authority cannot possibly understand this blessing. If they fully grasped this bliss, no one could condemn the prayer of Mary as she pushes down against her legs, desperate for friction, or her hands weaving through the sacred space between them to unbutton Marisa's silky, emerald blouse. If they could feel how she feels, they would not condemn the way Mary's lips hum against the crown of Marisa's head, anointing her with kisses.

They are the heretics; this is absolution.

The usual wall of self-consciousness doesn't slam down around her this time: she isn't constantly checking how she sounds and moves and looks, bound by her appearance and the implication of vulnerability, of enjoying it too much or not enough. Marisa is so plainly affected, clutching onto Mary like she'll somehow vanish, fingers through the beltloops of her jeans as she pulls her closer. Her shirt falls open and Mary kisses her sternum and the swell of her breasts, her hands barely brushing the underside of her bra, and Marisa's pulse jumps in need. Mary captures her lips with another kiss, slow and searching.

She pulls back, "I don't want to rush you, Marisa."

"You're not," Marisa answers breathlessly, "you couldn't."

"We can stop—"

"I don't want to."

She pulls Mary back into her again, abandoning caution, eager to be tethered in all the ways she has feared for so long, a fusion she needs but dares not reveal. She refuses to hide any portion of herself, to school her desperate want back into emptiness. There are so many foolish hopes in her, suppressed and subdued until they could be relieved in new avenues of pain and self-harm: torturing Ozymandias, ruining everything she has ever loved.

Mary unlatches her bra with one hand, sliding the straps from her shoulders until Marisa is bare from the waist up, and the fabric of the armrest rubs against her back. "God," she reverently whispers. "You're gorgeous."

The words coil and drip through her like melted butter and has never felt their impact when she's heard them before from another's mouth, lacking in poetry and honesty. But here they are earnest, and Mary's lips and tongue defend her thesis with compelling, irrefutable proof that Marisa Coulter is gorgeous, not because of what she can give or how she can be subdued, but because of who she _is_ , and Mary Malone will defend her to the last. 

Mary moans into her kiss and the breathy sound drowns out Marisa's internal monologue, flooding her with pleasure and heat. She slides off the sofa and onto her knees, hooking her fingers in Marisa's trousers to tug them down, the green fabric bunching in her hands. Her heels dig into the ground, raising her hips to slip out of her pants, and she lunges forward as they fall around her calves, one hand on the back of Mary's head as the other unhooks her bra. She fumbles and struggles and has no concept of how Mary did this so seamlessly, but Mary doesn't say anything about it except to sigh into her mouth and sweep her hands up the pale skin of Marisa's thighs until she whimpers in response, frantic and helpless to stop herself.

Mary kisses the inside of her thighs, the pads of her fingers sliding up the sides of her hips, beneath her underwear—

It chills Marisa all at once like the splash of arctic water, and she winces. Mary is on her knees before the sofa, before her, and the momentary thrill of it is swallowed up by dreadful memories flickering behind her closed eyelids. How frequently men put her there, on her knees, desecrated and debased, for their own gratification and to sate their illicit power dynamic. She opens her eyes and Mary watches her intently, holding either side of her face.

Mary kisses her again, only once, before she rests their foreheads together. "We can stop. Any time you want." She brushes a wayward hair behind Marisa's ear. "I mean it."

Tears spring up easily for her, shamefully easily, each time she's angry or ridiculed, which is more often than not, but this time they prickle in her eyes out of frustration and growing urgency— she doesn't want her to stop; she knows that with more certainty than she has ever dared admit— and her patience and charity and the soft rasp of her voice make her shiver. She doesn't know how to verbalize this permanent state of purgatory, where the hell and history that poisoned her mind are long distant things that still manage to sour the gates of heaven before her. She is terrified that these memories will keep her chained until she truly withers away to a quantum state, which, if she's being honest with herself, has been her preordained trajectory from the start.

"Hey," Mary says, thumbs grazing her earlobe and the base of her neck. "I'll still want you, even if it's not tonight."

"No, I don't want to stop. I just— not like this," Marisa chokes out. She fights her destiny, like always, and pulls Mary up, her hands on either side of her searching eyes. "Kiss me. I don't— the bed. Take me to bed."

"Of course." Mary plants a feather-soft kiss to her cheek and murmurs, "You sweet, poor thing. You must be cold."

Marisa hadn't noticed the goosebumps prickling her arms, or how much warmer Mary's hands were against her skin. She cannot tell if this is some small mercy, some rationalization to let her save face in the midst of her obvious turmoil and overwhelm, but she wraps her arms around herself, and latches onto the easy excuse with a simple nod. The sudden pause leaves her disoriented, hyper-aware of her surroundings and her disobedience, and the crawling recognition that she has never had a lover stop before. That maybe the moment is lost and she should leave, or that the heat and tension between them will dissipate so quickly they will remain forever dissatisfied with what could have been.

Mary tuts, "Well, I can't have that. I've done a poor job of warming you up." Before Marisa can deny her foolish self-deprecation, Mary smiles again and brushes another loose hair away from her cheek. Her fingertips trail down the side of Marisa's neck, to her shoulder, to her wrist, languid and exploring, before she gently takes her hand. "Come upstairs with me." 

Marisa nods again, shivering in her near-nakedness, and Mary leans past her for the grey blanket slung over the back of the sofa, wrapping it tightly around her shoulders. She takes her hand again, guiding her to the second story of her townhouse with a giggle and complaint, "It really is freezing in here. I must've lost my damn mind trying to ravish you on the sofa like a teenager when I have a perfectly good bed upstairs." She pauses at the top landing, her free hand covering her breasts, a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Let me in there," she nods to the blanket. Marisa opens her arms just wide enough for Mary to scoot in and wrap her arms around her waist, kissing the sloping line of Marisa's shoulder. "You'd have kissed me in the chemistry lab, I bet. I'm irresistible in safety goggles."

Marisa's mind whirs as she translates Mary's words into some quip about secondary education, as if that was typical for girls, as if it would have been acceptable for them to kiss at all. She feels giddy with the notion, playful with possibilities and the confirmation that Mary isn't done with her despite the pause in her ministrations. And she realizes too, with an unraveling knot in her stomach, that she didn't know she could have both: the scalding heat of sexual attraction and the sensual warmth of comfortable teasing. She doesn't know how to play, not really, but she can learn.

"It's the beakers," she replies, one fingertip dusting the skin of Mary's waist above her jeans. "They're like an aphrodisiac to me."

Mary grants her a throaty laugh, the sound of it a novel blessing, and pulls herself out of the blanket and into the small, tidy bedroom. The bedside table lamp shines with electric light, casting long shadows across the stack of books beneath it and chest of drawers beside the closet. She wonders if the blue cocktail dress from her conference in Zurich hangs unceremoniously in the back, or if the bottom is lined with row after row of colorful trainers. Moonlight filters through the thin curtains of her tiny window, and Mary's eyes gleam pale like opals when she peels back the comforter on the bed and says, "Get in."

The grey wool blanket is replaced by Mary's warmth and weight, and the soft press of her wine-stained lips on Marisa's skin. A nonsensical thought occurs— this is where she belongs, on her back beneath the sheets with Mary's tongue in her mouth and her knee pressed between her legs, stripped down to nearly nothing _—_ and she realizes she is too far gone to stop, completely irrational and muddled. If this will bring down calamity on her head, so be it. She's done far worse for less reward, and Mary's thumb on her breast feels like a victory: she has a choice and she chooses this with more conviction than she has known in decades. Marisa's hands push lower, grasping for anything she can touch, unbuttoning and unzipping Mary's jeans in an insistent rush.

Her breath catches as Mary's dauntless tongue moves lower, working her nipple as she slides out of her jeans. She rests her weight where it was before, only the thin fabric of their underwear between them, and Marisa _hates_ it. She loathes the boundary between them, and presses up against Mary's thigh, feeling her whole center of gravity shift as Mary groans in pleasure, moving her hips in a steady rhythm. Her fingers make a path across the taut skin of her stomach, trailing over the wet fabric between her legs and she sighs into Marisa's ear, appreciative and hungry. Her fingers move to the side, knuckles grazing her inner thigh as one nail tugs lightly at the elastic of her underwear, just barely against her sensitive flesh, and Marisa's chest heaves at the combined friction of the fabric and Mary against her.

"May I take these off, Marisa?" her voice is serious but her eyes tease, and she has never looked more like a miracle.

Marisa feels a flushed, embarrassed pout cross her features, not unhappy but certainly lacking control. She is the one who does the toying, not the one with whom people _toy_ , but her lips are swollen with kisses and she thinks that the circumstances of her powerlessness are profoundly different now: that it's worth her fitful, helpless squirming when Mary's finger traces the line of her underwear where it meets the crease of her thigh. She feels the heat low in her stomach blooming as Mary stalls, patient as ever, waiting for her reply, delaying her gratification.

"Yes," Marisa breathes.

She doesn't waste another second. Mary kisses her as she undresses her completely, resting the weight of her body against Marisa's right side, one arm sliding beneath her shoulders to hold her closer. Her touch is feather soft at first and Marisa gasps with it, the cascading sensation burning across every inch of her skin. Mary murmurs into the throbbing pulse of her exposed neck, "You're so wet, darling. You're so good."

Marisa's tremulous fingers weave through Mary's hair and she pulls her down again for searing kiss, lest she see how vulnerable she is in this moment, how much control she has truly relinquished. She manages a shuddering inhale, a final effort to regain her strength and composure, and says, "You don't have to be gentle."

"I want to be gentle," says Mary into her lips, and her fingers slide so sweetly against her that Marisa nearly cries.

She kisses her deeply as her fingers work, and Marisa's mind dims with need, until there is no self-consciousness, no sin, no mistakes to haunt her, and she grows closer and closer to the edge as she writhes. So, so gently Mary works into her, knuckle by knuckle, filling her up with pressure and perfection, and Marisa pushes hard against her hand, begging for depth, riding her fingers. She grinds against her palm, overwhelmed with her own arousal and the shaking of her legs. Suddenly, Mary stops, and Marisa desperately follows her lips as she pulls back, blushing and panting. Mary stares down at her with hooded eyes, feverish and shiny with lust.

"May I taste you, Marisa?"

The mewling noise that escapes her throat is anguished and lewd, and Mary bites her lip at the sound, her fingers inside her, still and intimate and waiting again.

" _Please_ ," Marisa begs, and for once she feels no shame in it, no mask to preserve. She needs Mary to finish what she's started like she has never needed anything in her life. 

Mary kisses her way down her body, fingers slowly, tantalizingly moving again, and Marisa spreads her legs wide, hooking one knee over Mary's shoulder. The moment her tongue touches her, Mary moans between her legs and Marisa's body clenches with desire. She lurches forward in silence, her eyebrows drawn together and mouth open wide in unrestrained ecstasy. 

Mary is inside her and she whittled down to a perfect singularity: to a time before the mark of Cain stained her flesh, in the chaos that thrived before Genesis, in a universe without sin. There is no order in this world— there is only explosive starlight and the burst of its dying heat in the yawning, godless expanse— and Marisa feels connected to it for the first time, completed by something larger than herself, and cries out in a crescendo of euphoria. She arches her back, pressing hard against Mary's willing mouth as her heels dig into the mattress, closer to rapture, closer to Mary, and her hands clap down on her lips in a feeble attempt not to cry out when she comes. But it is too much for her body to contain, and her palms do nothing to hide the wordless scream or the ragged panting that follow her down.

She rolls to the side and curls into a ball, her face hidden in her hands. Her eyes well with tears again because she doesn't know what to do with this— how to sort these sensations and their meanings, and the way they make her melt into a puddle of weakness and want— but she feels Mary kiss her ribs, her shoulder, her ear, and she slides up behind her to wrap an arm around her waist. For several heartbeats they share a pillow, saying nothing.

Mary strokes her arm indulgently, reassuringly, her nose buried against Marisa's spine. As if to herself, she murmurs, "How gorgeous you are."

Marisa's eyes screw shut and a lump forms in her throat. She is weak now, deplorably weak, and Mary's voice is mesmerized and sex-drunk, as if she is the one who came more intensely than she ever has before. It inundates her: the gratification of uncoerced, enthusiastic consent, not because she has something to gain from the exchange, but because she has her own agency and desire; the inexplicable, engulfing allure of the woman beside her, an attraction acted upon after years of oppression, the magnetism of her body to Mary Malone's; and, most of all, how undeserving she is of all of this.

She sobs into the heels of her hands, trying with all her might to preserve her detachment, her strength. But Mary's kindness drowns her like a lost sailor in a storm, and she cannot bear Mary knowing all the cracks in her façade, or seeing firsthand the smoke that leaks out of her broken body like a black, billowing veil. 

"Hey," says Mary, pressing closer against her back. "It's okay. Everything is okay."

"Don't—" she begins, but it chokes into a meaningless whisper. 

_Don't be so gentle with me_ , Marisa wants to say. _I don't deserve it. Everything is falling apart._

Mary releases her at once, scooting back in the bed, and the warmth of her vanishes. "Ah, I'm sorry. I understand if you need some space. You don't— you don't have to do anything you don't want to do."

Marisa steadies herself, wiping hard at her eyes, inhaling so deeply her lungs stretch and ache. She heaves a quivering breath and rolls back to face Mary, hands clasped over her bare chest. She shakily says, "I don't need space," and berates herself for being completely unable to explain. She doesn't have the words.

Mary reaches out to her, fingertips brushing Marisa's knuckles with reverent softness, careful not to hurt her bandaged finger. "All right. I mean it though. I want you to be comfortable."

The emotions roil inside her, unused to pleasure and safety, abruptly afraid of ruining it like a too-clumsy child playing with her mother's porcelain. There is so much inside her that she cannot explain, not here and now, maybe not ever. The lies of omission wriggle in her gut, and she can list a thousand awful things she's done in her cruelty and carelessness, but keeping secrets from Mary Malone is the one that stings her heart with a host of fresh pinpricks.

"It's fine," she murmurs, bleak and vague.

Mary blankets her curled fists with an open palm. "I just want you to know that I really like you, no matter what. Even if you're not— comfortable with this, uh, situation."

Marisa exhales sharply, almost a laugh, before blinking several times in rapid succession. Her sleek bun is in ruins, and all the long strands of hair tickle her neck and fall into her roving eyes. It would be funny, Mary believing Marisa does not share her attraction, if it didn't so plainly hurt her. "That's not the issue."

"I would understand," Mary's brow knits together, "I _really_ would—"

"Mary."

"—and I would still want to be your friend."

" _Mary_."

"I should have said it earlier, before we—"

Marisa captures her mouth mid-sentence with a kiss, tasting herself mingling with Mary's lips, an intoxicating and erotic spectrum of flavors. She flattens her hand on her pale sternum, pushing her down and blanketing her body, sliding her thigh between Mary's legs and her tongue between her lips, mirroring all the things that were done to her, all the motions and noises she savored. Mary's cheeks flush pink beneath her, her hands drifting along Marisa's neck and shoulders, pulling her down for another kiss, and another, until she doesn't let her go again. She moans into her mouth, grinding against Marisa.

She already knows the answer and doesn't bother to ask permission before coaxing Mary's underwear down her soft legs. Marisa rises to her knees, planted between Mary's as she admires the shape of her body, willing and vulnerable before her. She cannot keep her hands away; they are always reaching for more: sliding down Mary's thighs and against the smooth skin of her hipbones, pulling her closer and closer still because she _needs_ her, and Marisa is a selfish woman.

It's bliss, the dripping, velvety feeling of Mary on her fingertips. She hasn't done this with a woman but suddenly doesn't care at all because Mary is eager and smiling and _wet_ , and Marisa understands now why people in her world would risk so much for a chance at this feeling. She wants to memorize at her face as she moans; she wants to hold her closer still. Without removing her fingers she presses forward, her left hand lacing through Mary's hair as she kisses her, her tongue deep in Mary's mouth.

She tastes herself and Mary and the wine, and her fingers slide deeper into her, moving firmly but gently, the way she was shown. The blush on Mary's face suits her beautifully, and Marisa is alight with the sensation of being connected, being inside, being trusted with something so precious. No part of her wants it to end— she can be patient too, if only for this— but Mary pleads so prettily and incoherently that she could never deny her.

_Darling, darling,_ she thinks. _That's what she called me. That's what she is._

"Come for me, darling," she sighs into Mary's ear, breathless with yearning.

Mary tightens around her fingers, gasping as she pulls Marisa down into her chest, clinging to her like a lifeline. Her hips jerk as her head falls back against the pillows with a wordless cry— a whine, a gasp, a moan, Marisa cannot tell, but it's the most beautiful sound she's ever heard— and she feels her come, the joy and salvation of it a consecration of its own, a secret thing just for her and Mary. Her fingers' pace slows, matching the trembling heat around her, and she listens to the hammering of Mary's heartbeat and the rustle of her lungs as she struggles to catch her breath.

"Mmm, god, Marisa. You really can do everything."

Mary's voice is hoarse, sluggish, and Marisa shares her weightlessness and satisfaction. Her hands sweep every inch of Marisa she can find: her cheeks, her spine, her elbows. She kisses her fingers, glistening with her slickness, and Marisa marvels at her affection in the afterglow. Mary holds her close, not rebuking or abandoning her now that she's finished, and continues with an amused, dreamy smile, "I hope you feel comfortable right there because, after that, I'm disinclined to let you go."

Marisa lowers her face, hiding her eyes, and the tears that always well up in them unbidden. She cannot understand why or how Mary extends herself so freely, not to _her_ , the living embodiment of self-serving immorality. She is endlessly tender and no weaker for it, doting and clear and intentional. Wholly immune to Marisa's toxicity, as if something so small couldn't hurt her if it tried.

She rests against Mary's chest, her lips mapping constellations on her collarbone, one palm gently spread on her hip. She brushes the hair from Marisa's face, tucking it behind her ear, and adds, "If you have to leave, I do understand. But I want to make it very clear that I'd like it if you stayed the night."

She understands why so many people love Mary Malone. She understands and it frightens her, but not enough to run.

"I'll stay," she quietly says.

She feels Mary sigh with relief, her chest expanding and contracting beneath her, and she kisses along Marisa's forehead with her perpetual, ineffable goodness, contentedly tugging up the covers around them. When Marisa allows herself to settle into the comfort of her embrace— her hands reaching out and finding what they keep searching for: fingers intertwined with her own— she doesn't feel like such an empty thing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marisa discovers the joy of sapphic sex and just heel-face turns into a good person. 
> 
> Thank you in advance for all comments! This fandom is just full of lovely people. <3
> 
> EDIT: HOW ARE WE DOING MARYISA FANS???? I just cannot compose myself at this gorgeous [Hattersarts](https://hattersarts.tumblr.com/) commission of the Maryisa kiss in this chapter. I will never recover. I will never be over it. [Please enjoy these beauties as much as I do.](https://hattersarts.tumblr.com/post/643190205194567680/tripleburger-commissioned-me-to-draw-that-bit-of)


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